Search results

This study aims to explore how placement of lean practices (removal of waste from all areas of an organization’s value stream) (Worley and Doolen, 2006) within different organizational strategic contexts can affect the factors that lead to lean implementation success.

The authors use empirical data to examine how strategy affects various factors that are identified as prerequisites for successful lean implementation. Specifically, this study uses Venkatraman’s (1998) measures to examine various types of strategy within organizations, how they correlate with both the workers’ mindset (perceived job security and perceived personal benefits of lean) and the processes in implementation (training on lean concepts and techniques).

Findings indicate that a relationship exists between strategy and factors needed for lean implementation success. Perceived job security had a positive relationship with all four types of strategies examined (proactiveness, defensiveness, analysis and futurity) (Venkatraman, 1998). Moreover, perceived personal benefits of lean had a positive relationship with futurity but negative relationships with proactiveness and defensiveness strategies. Finally, training on lean concepts and techniques was positively related to analysis and futurity strategies but negatively related to proactiveness strategy.

The authors’ research illustrates the positive impact of aligning lean with strategy. This topic may be of particular interest to executives, especially middle managers, looking to improve firm performance.

Studies show the benefits of supplier integration, yet negative attitudes toward supplier integration exist that research fails to explain. The purpose of this paper is to investigate managerial attitudes toward supplier integration and how intra-firm processes and culture affect the formation of such attitudes. In particular, the paper aims to examine the differing influences between the USA and China.

Using multi-group structural equation modeling, the authors re-analyzed the data collected by Nahm et al. (2004) and Li et al. (2014) comprised of responses from 224 US and 117 Chinese manufacturing managers.

The study finds that managerial attitudes toward supplier integration depend on the degree to which a collaborative organizational culture and synchronous manufacturing practices exist within a firm. Moreover, in the Chinese context, the influence of a collaborative organizational culture is lower than the influence of synchronous manufacturing practices. The opposite is found in the US context.

The results suggest that overcoming negative attitudes of supplier integration requires more than simply espousing the benefits of supplier integration; looking deeper into an organization’s internal characteristics and situational context is required. In particular, if the country context already emphasizes the collaborative culture, the organization should focus on synchronous manufacturing practices in order to form a positive attitude toward supplier integration.

This paper is the first to examine how managerial attitudes toward supplier integration are formed. The work is novel because the authors suggest that the formation of managerial attitudes toward supplier integration inter-firm management can be affected by intra-firm management in the minds of managers, which are influenced by country contexts.

This study aims to examine how business executives' political connections are associated with government subsidies and strategic change, and how they, in turn, influence firm performance, measured by return on assets (ROA) and market share.

Hypotheses were tested using the large firm-level dataset provided by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) of China for the period 2003–2013. This is one of the most comprehensive datasets of Chinese manufacturing companies and includes 321,722 firms on average per year, which spans over 37 industries.

The authors found that political connections, measured by senior executives' membership in the National People's Congress of China (NPC), were positively associated with government subsidies but were not associated with strategic change. Also, government subsidies, as the underlying mechanism, mediated the relationships between NPC membership and firm performance but strategic change did not.

By examining the possible mediators between corporate political strategies and firm performance, the authors confirmed the thought that the impact of political connections on firm performance is a complex phenomenon and goes beyond a simple direct effect. However, future research could explore other mediators in this relationship.

While the direct relationship between political connections and firm performance has been examined in management literature, the results are mixed. For the first time, the authors addressed the gap and opened the “black box” – the underlying mechanisms of this relationship. This study's findings contribute to the literature on corporate political activity, strategic change, and their influences on firm performance.

Globalization and accelerating product life cycles require use of time‐based manufacturing practices (TBMP) accompanied by organizational integration. Evidence has suggested that cultural integrative beliefs (IB) influence the presence of TBMP but research has not investigated two alternative theory‐based views: TBMP influences the formation of integrative beliefs; and TBMP and integrative beliefs interact to enhance performance. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between espoused values, TBMP and performance.

The authors empirically re‐analyze work carried out in 2004 by Nahm et al., using structural equations modeling and factor scores regression.

Support is found for the competing model that implies IB is a consequent of TBMP rather than an antecedent. This new theoretical perspective is not reconciled via the interaction model.

The authors' re‐examination suggests TBMP and IB are mutually reinforcing, implying that resources can be devoted to simultaneously implementing TBMP and IB, rather than a time‐consuming sequential strategy.

The paper is the first to empirically test three perspectives on how organizational culture and operations management practices interrelate. Conventional conceptions of cultural beliefs' role are questioned and a new perspective is offered. Additionally, the FSR method gives a structured approach to latent variable interaction modeling.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether substantial differences in institutional environment in China lead to different levels of demand for political connection.

Using a data set of 296 listed private sector enterprises (PSEs) in China, the authors empirically investigate the effects of institutional environmental factors upon political connection.

The authors find that the lower the level of regional property right protection, the more powerful the government intervention, and the slower the economic development, the more motivated the PSEs were to build relationship with the government via partial state ownership. However, the degree of local corruption was not correlated with the demand for political connection. The authors also find that partial state ownership in PSEs exerted a positive effect on performance.

Deviating from previous literature that has been mostly concerned about the economic consequences to firms caused by political connections, this paper examines the reasons for political connection among Chinese PSEs. The authors introduce a new dimension of political connection, namely, partial state ownership in PSEs.

The purpose of this paper is to present a model linking the role of design engineers to shared team knowledge, enhanced manufacturability, and product development outcomes. New product manufacturability is a quality of the product design that indicates the ease and reliability by which an organization develops products by using its manufacturing and supply chain resources.

The model is tested using a sample of 205 product development projects from firms in the USA and Canada.

The findings of the large‐scale empirical study suggest that by facilitating informing practices among functional specialists, design engineers help translate a functional portrayal of the product in terms of customer attributes, to a form description in terms of engineering characteristics, and then to a fabrication view in terms of manufacturing processes.

New product manufacturability can be a distinctive competency that provides competitive advantage by lowering costs, improving customer value, and speeding products to market.

In contrast to previous research that showed that role changes of design engineers have a narrow impact on development productivity (e.g. improving resource allocation), this paper suggests that these role changes of design engineers have a much broader impact on manufacturability and, through this, improve manufacturing cost, time‐to‐market, and value‐to‐customers.

Product development is recognized as cross‐functional teamwork that has become important in the fast‐paced, globally competitive environment. Despite an extant body of knowledge on the importance of fuzzy front‐end planning and functions of goals in the management literature, the impact of uncertain project environment and goal setting mechanisms in front‐end planning is not fully understood. Product development literature presents numerous case studies or conceptual papers that emphasize the importance of upfront planning and a need for team building; however, large‐scale empirical studies are rare. This paper presents a model linking uncertain project environment, project target clarity, teamwork and its outcome measures (i.e. a product's value to customer and time to market). The data were analyzed from 205 product development projects of firms from the USA and Canada. Valid and reliable instruments were developed to assess the nature and impact of inter‐relationships of these variables. Results from structural model tests indicate that uncertain project environment influences the nature of project targets which in turn affects the level of teamwork. Teamwork is an important process outcome for enhancing value to customer and time to market. Management implications are discussed as well.

Although product development is recognized as knowledge‐intensive work, we have limited understanding of its impact on product development performance. The mechanisms by which knowledge sharing contributes to strategic imperatives such as time to market and value to customers are also not well understood. Despite increased interest in knowledge sharing in cross‐functional teams, there have been few large‐scale empirical studies of its efficacy. This paper develops a model that explains how shared knowledge, defined in three types – shared knowledge of customers, suppliers, and internal capabilities – enhances process performance, as well as downstream strategic imperatives of time to market and value to customers. The model is tested using 205 responses on product development projects by US automotive engineers. The results show that shared knowledge of customers, suppliers, and internal capabilities positively affect product development performance, as well as indirectly affect downstream strategic imperatives via enhanced process performance.