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Health care organizations are increasingly demanded to balance the institutional logic of “medical professionalism” and “business-like health care,” that is, to both recognize physicians’ professional expertise while locating it in a wider social, economic, and political organizational setting. The purpose of this paper is to examine the implications from this shift in terms of leadership work in health care organizations.

Case study methodology including interviews with 15 residents in Swedish health care organizations.

A study of the willingness of residents to take on leadership positions show that leadership roles are treated as what is potentially hindering the acquisition of the know-how, skills, and expertise demanded to excel in the clinical work. Consequently, taking on leadership positions in the future was relatively unattractive for the residents. In order to overcome such perceived conflict between professional skill development and leadership roles, top management of health care organizations must help residents overcome such beliefs, or other professional groups may increasingly populate leadership positions, a scenario not fully endorsed by the community of physicians.

The paper demonstrates how complementary or completing institutional logics are influencing debates and identities on the “shop floors” of organizations.

Investigates what approaches to quality lead to best quality and financial performance across different regions of the world. Reports a survey of 977 firms in Asia/South Pacific, Europe, and North America. Fifty‐two items that suggest how a firm might improve quality were factor analysed and grouped into 11 factors, each factor a broader approach to quality improvement than any one item. Actual quality was measured eight different ways. Each approach to quality improvement (factor) was correlated to each quality measure, as well as to several financial measures. The results suggest that a company’s approach to quality correlates to actual quality and to a lesser extent to financial performance. The major factors found to influence actual quality were the organization’s knowledge of quality management, its degree of customer focus, and management involvement. When the task was to predict performance outcomes in any region, the specific factors that best predict performance were found to vary from region to region. That is, there were specific models within a region that better predicted performance than the model which predicted performance across all regions.

This chapter explores the advantages of newness and positive aspects of resource constraints, critically departing from assumptions of resource constraints and liabilities of newness. The chapter is based on a multiple case study consisting of nascent entrepreneurial processes from inexperienced entrepreneurs with severely constrained access to resources. Six theoretical concepts (legitimacy, fashion, flexibility, networks, bootstrapping, and motivation) are developed in the frame of reference. Empirical data is collected on a rich variety of sources, including longitudinal data in the form of weekly logbooks, business plans, theoretical reflections, and additional collected data during the process. Based on this data, the analysis shows that while these entrepreneurs face resource constraints and liabilities of newness, they also use strategies to leverage their constraints and novelty as an advantage in advancing their venturing efforts.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how to manage business relationships in retail operations. In particular, this study examines the links between business relationships with principal stakeholders, operations strategy, and performance.

Drawing upon the stakeholder theory, this study employs a path analytic framework to understand the effects of business relationships on retail operations strategy and performance for a sample of retail companies in China.

The findings indicate that good relationships with customer and supplier could enable retailers to be more efficient in developing quality and flexible strategies, and that low cost and flexible strategies, in turn, influence business performance. However, the results suggest that the vital role that the Chinese government played in economic activities in the 1980s and 1990s has diminished gradually. It is appropriate to treat the good relationship with government bodies as a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for retail success in China.

This study seems to be the first in investigating the effects of business relationships on operations strategy and performance applying a stakeholder theory perspective.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationships between employee competencies, information technology (IT) applications, operations strategy, and business performance.

Drawing upon the resource‐based theory, this study employs a path analytic framework to investigate how employee competencies and IT applications influence the development of competitive operations strategies and business performance for a sample of retail firms in China.

The findings indicate significant and positive relationships between employee competencies and operations strategy (e.g. low cost, quality and flexibility). IT applications also play a vital role in helping retailers pursue a flexibility strategy. The operations strategies of low cost and flexibility in turn influence business performance.

This study seems to be the first in investigating the impacts of employee competencies and IT applications on operations strategy and performance in the service sector, especially in the Chinese context.

A literature review within the manufacturing strategy (MS) discipline with a focus on thematic developments is provided. Based on recent studies, a set of challenges posed to manufacturing enterprise of the future are summarized, and thematic areas are analyzed in relation to meeting those challenges. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Based on a select set of 506 articles published in top-ranked refereed international journals in the discipline of operations management, major and subthemes are identified and the publication trends in these themes are provided with time and across geographical regions, namely: North America, Europe, and other parts of the world.

MS literature is predominantly focussed on the economic objectives of firms without a due focus on the social and environmental perspectives. MS literature covers 11 major thematic areas, namely: MS components and paradigms, manufacturing capabilities (MCs), strategic choices (SCs), best practices (BPs), the strategy process (SP), supply-chain management (SCM), performance measurement, transnational comparisons, global manufacturing, environmental/green manufacturing, and literature reviews. The research in two areas – SCs, and MCs – has been in decline, while the research in BPs, the SP, and transnational comparisons is growing (in absolute figures). Various research opportunities for future studies are identified.

The literature review is limited in its selection of articles and journals, however, the identified trends clarify the state of research by the MS research community at large.

For researchers, multiple new research directions are identified in order to advance knowledge in the field of MS. The publication trends also highlight thematic areas where most of the MS body of knowledge is currently available and can be utilized by practitioners.

The paper’s novelty comes from: first, a broader and deeper review of thematic areas that has not been researched before, second, trends in thematic areas by time, across geographical regions, and including time-region dyads, and third, coverage provided by MS literature in meeting challenges posed to manufacturing enterprise of the future.

The purpose of this paper is to report and discuss the manufacturing competitive priorities (cost, delivery, quality, flexibility, and innovativeness) practiced by Kuwaiti manufacturers. It also investigates the possible impact of plant size and type of industry on the level of focus at different priorities. In addition, the level of association between different pairs of competitive priorities was investigated. This allowed testing the traditional competitive priorities trade‐off model which was frequently argued by early operations strategy researchers.

The data collection method used in this study is that of the questionnaire that was administrated in 62 Kuwaiti plants working in two different industries, food processing and refractors. Level of focus (on a five‐point Likert scale) at each of the five competitive priorities, type of industry and number of employees were the main research variables. Since ordinal scales are used in the current study to measure the plant focus on the five competitive priorities, Mann‐Whitney test for two independent samples was used to test for the effect of type of industry and Kruska‐Wallis test was utilized to investigate the relationship between plant size and the level of focus on each competitive priority. In addition, testing the level of associations between degrees of emphasis on different pairs of competitive priorities was through the Goodman and Kruskal's γ coefficients.

Empirical evidence is provided that plant size is a useful indicator of the emphasis on some competitive priorities. It shows that small and medium plants place significantly more emphasis on on‐time delivery while medium and large plants are distinguished by their strong emphasis on flexibility. However, difference size groups indicate the same level of focus on quality improvement, cost reduction and innovativeness. Noticeably, the two industrial sectors do not differ significantly in their level of focus on each of the five competitive priorities. The two industries focused on on‐time delivery and quality improvement strategies as the two main competitive priorities. Both flexibility and innovativeness were the least emphasized priorities in both sectors. The preliminary findings do not seem to support the main argument of the competitive priorities trade‐off model.

Owing to the limitation of data, only employment was the only indicator of plant size. Total revenue and total assets could be used in future studies to verify or deny these findings. Moreover, using a better multidimensional construct in measuring the level of focus on each competitive priority represents another way of improving this study.

The paper adds to the scarce body of empirical studies of manufacturing strategies in newly emerged economies. This is especially true in the Middle East and the Gulf areas. The findings augment the development of a better contingency theory of plant competitive priorities to capture the complexity of different plant characteristics.

In an extreme and intentional institutional void, African refugees in Israel are bricoleuring by building an entrepreneurship market next to an “open” detention camp. The purpose of this paper is to analyze how refugee entrepreneurs overcome institutional voids through bricolage in an illegal marketplace outside the detention camp.

In order to deal with the question of why and how people act entrepreneurial under extreme circumstances, the interpretive/social constructionist paradigm is applied in form of the multiple stories milieu case study pattern. Data were gathered via official reports, interviews and observations.

Outside the detention camp it is via bricolage that entrepreneurs address the economic detour in the intentional institutional void. At a place which is meant to make asylum seekers leave Israel by coining them “infiltrators” and by “making their lives miserable,” bricoleurs attend their own and the needs of fellow detainees providing goods and service and community space.

By contextualizing entrepreneurial practices, the paper contributes to the understanding of refugee entrepreneurship by demonstrating how refugees – within the pressure and constraints of context – initiate entrepreneurial activities. Theoretically the paper extends knowledge of minority entrepreneurs who are acting as bricoleurs, explaining how their entrepreneuring can be a kind of space creation process.

Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are recognized as playing a pivotal role in the economic growth and technological progress of many countries, yet there is a dearth of research that examines the operational performance and strategies of these smaller enterprises, especially in the Asian context. Of particular interest is the operational posture in terms of the key operations priorities adopted by successful SMEs in carving out their own competitive niches. This study is the first to develop a taxonomy of operations strategies based on the operational performance of high performing SMEs in Singapore. As Singapore is one of the most competitive countries in the world and a highly successful newly industrializing nation in Asia, the use of Singapore data provides benchmarking and best practice information for international business communities and newly industrializing countries. Three strategic clusters were identified. Analysis showed significant differences in the operational posture, financial performance and the kinds of improvement programs undertaken by the three strategic clusters. The strategic role of operations in terms of its contribution to corporate strategic formulation and financial profitability was also investigated. Managerial implications of our findings are presented.