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This paper aims to point to established theory bases from other disciplines that may be used to illustrate the benefits, complexities and risks accompanying the adoption of radio‐frequency identification (RFID) technology.

Three theory streams are explored with respect to RFID adoption at two levels: the level of the tagged unit; and the level of the adopting firm. Each theory stream is evaluated specifically with respect to RFID, and research questions are proposed.

A variety of theoretical disciplines bring to light tension between uncertainty that spurs RFID adoption and uncertainty that accompanies RFID adoption.

Insights are provided for managers wrestling with: the question of whether and/or how to adopt RFID; or concerns regarding the implications of their decision to adopt RFID. In addition, the theory bases explored in this research offer guidance regarding risks that accompany RFID adoption but are not commonly considered.

For those contemplating adoption of, or research into, RFID technology, the paper offers a detailed synthesis of valuable theory streams, as well as promising research questions.

In an environment in which information technology has become a critical link between and among suppliers and customers, organizations were recently threatened by potential systems failures that could have erased the gains of the past decade. Although experts predicted that Y2K could lead to devastating results, those dire predictions turned out to be false. However, we suggest that a careful analysis of IS decision making during the Y2K crisis can provide insights into how and why IS managers make decisions. We argue that two schools of organizational theory provide cogent perspectives on this problem. In particular, the literatures of organizational ecology and institutional theory explain not only the difficulties firms had in recognizing and reacting to the Year 2000 problem, but also the pressures placed on them by constituents aware of this phenomenon. Such conclusions underscore the value of multiple theory bases in exploring what appear to be unprecedented managerial challenges brought on by the changing role of IT.

In the last four years, since Volume I of this Bibliography first appeared, there has been an explosion of literature in all the main functional areas of business. This wealth of material poses problems for the researcher in management studies — and, of course, for the librarian: uncovering what has been written in any one area is not an easy task. This volume aims to help the librarian and the researcher overcome some of the immediate problems of identification of material. It is an annotated bibliography of management, drawing on the wide variety of literature produced by MCB University Press. Over the last four years, MCB University Press has produced an extensive range of books and serial publications covering most of the established and many of the developing areas of management. This volume, in conjunction with Volume I, provides a guide to all the material published so far.

The purpose of this paper is to empirically investigate the relationship among inventory performance, financial performance (FP) and product quality.

The empirical analysis is based on two-stage least squares analysis of detailed firm-transaction data from Chinese manufacturing export firms for the period between 2001 and 2013.

Results show that inventory performance has a positive impact on product quality while using inventory efficiency, inventory productivity and inventory leanness to measure inventory performance. Furthermore, the effect of inventory performance on product quality is found to be partially mediated by FP.

The research provides mangers evidence of the benefits of inventory performance as an antecedent of product quality. Managers without sufficient liquidity or cost advantage to get better FP can achieve product quality improvement through enhancing inventory management performance.

This study first empirically investigates the relationship between inventory performance and product quality, and examines the mediating effect of FP on this relationship.

The concept and practice of e-services has become essential in business transactions. Yet there are still many organizations that have not developed e-services optimally. This is especially relevant in the context of Indonesian Airline companies. Therefore, many airline customers in Indonesia are still in doubt about it, or even do not use it. To fill this gap, this study attempts to develop a model for e-services adoption and empirically examines the factors influencing the airlines customers in Indonesia in using e-services offered by the Indonesian airline companies. Taking six Indonesian airline companies as a case example, the study investigated the antecedents of e-services usage of Indonesian airlines. This study further examined the impacts of motivation on customers in using e-services in the Indonesian context. Another important aim of this study was to investigate how ages, experiences and geographical areas moderate effects of e-services usage.

The study adopts a positivist research paradigm with a two-phase sequential mixed method design involving qualitative and quantitative approaches. An initial research model was first developed based on an extensive literature review, by combining acceptance and use of information technology theories, expectancy theory and the inter-organizational system motivation models. A qualitative field study via semi-structured interviews was then conducted to explore the present state among 15 respondents. The results of the interviews were analysed using content analysis yielding the final model of e-services usage. Eighteen antecedent factors hypotheses and three moderating factors hypotheses and 52-item questionnaire were developed. A focus group discussion of five respondents and a pilot study of 59 respondents resulted in final version of the questionnaire.

In the second phase, the main survey was conducted nationally to collect the research data among Indonesian airline customers who had already used Indonesian airline e-services. A total of 819 valid questionnaires were obtained. The data was then analysed using a partial least square (PLS) based structural equation modelling (SEM) technique to produce the contributions of links in the e-services model (22% of all the variances in e-services usage, 37.8% in intention to use, 46.6% in motivation, 39.2% in outcome expectancy, and 37.7% in effort expectancy). Meanwhile, path coefficients and t-values demonstrated various different influences of antecedent factors towards e-services usage. Additionally, a multi-group analysis based on PLS is employed with mixed results. In the final findings, 14 hypotheses were supported and 7 hypotheses were not supported.

The major findings of this study have confirmed that motivation has the strongest contribution in e-services usage. In addition, motivation affects e-services usage both directly and indirectly through intention-to-use. This study provides contributions to the existing knowledge of e-services models, and practical applications of IT usage. Most importantly, an understanding of antecedents of e-services adoption will provide guidelines for stakeholders in developing better e-services and strategies in order to promote and encourage more customers to use e-services. Finally, the accomplishment of this study can be expanded through possible adaptations in other industries and other geographical contexts.

The objective of this study is to explore the structural attributes of the pharmaceutical industry before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic by examining the relationship between inventory and firm performance and developing a taxonomy of pharmaceutical firms based on the earns-turns matrix.

This study examines the inventory–firm performance linkage, considering both total inventory and its discrete inventory components in pharmaceutical firms. In addition, this research develops a new taxonomy of pharmaceutical firms based on the earns-turns matrix. A large panel dataset of firms in the US pharmaceutical industry was collected for the period 2000–2019.

The results reveal that strategic groups identified based on this taxonomy show different levels of profitability and inventory turns in the earns-turns matrix. Most pharmaceutical firms moved from the low-right to the top-left section in the earns-turns matrix, indicating that these firms have generally pursued profitability rather than effective inventory management.

This study explores the structural attributes of the pharmaceutical industry using the earns-turns matrix. This two-dimensional analysis may not, however, capture the full complexity of inventory–firm performance dynamics.

The mapping of strategic groups on the earns-turns matrix provides a useful tool for visual representations of the dynamics of strategic groups in terms of financial performance and inventory management performance. Practitioners can use the earns-turns matrix to benchmark their firm's position against their competitors.

This study broadens the scope of operations management research by introducing the earns-turns matrix as an empirical validation tool for operational and strategic management theories. This study emphasizes the effectiveness of the earns-turns matrix in analyzing strategic groups of pharmaceutical firms.

As disaster resilience activities are increasingly occurring at the neighbourhood level, there is a growing recognition in research and in practice of the contributions that community stakeholders can make in assessing the resilience of their communities. The purpose of this paper is to describe the process in deriving a disaster resilience measurement framework by soliciting the perspectives of stakeholders from urban neighbourhoods in two countries. The authors examined their community values, and their perspectives on both the concept of resilience and the essential elements that they believe would contribute to the resiliency of their neighbourhoods.

The authors used an appreciative inquiry approach to draw out the perspectives of 58 stakeholders from nine focus groups in five urban neighbourhoods in New Zealand and in the USA.

Results of this research show common values and recurring perceived characteristics of disaster resilience across the study sites. A neighbourhood-based disaster resilience measurement framework is developed that encompasses individual/psychological, socio-cultural, economic, infrastructural/built, and institutional/governance dimensions of disaster resilience. In the process of developing the framework, the authors identified challenges in engaging certain segments of the population and in accounting for wider structural influences on neighbourhood resilience.

Issues relating to inclusive community engagement and linkages to cross-scalar resilience factors need to be addressed in future studies.

Results of this research provide insights and guidance for policy makers and practitioners when engaging communities in the development of resilience metrics.

This study fills the literature gap in evaluating community values and stakeholders’ perspectives on disaster resilience when identifying metrics for resilience interventions in urban neighbourhoods. The proposed measurement framework is derived from cross-cultural and diverse socioeconomic settings.

Natural selection—survival of the fittest—is as old as life itself. Applied genetics which is purposeful in contrast to natural selection also has a long history, particularly in agriculture; it has received impetus from the more exacting demands of the food industry for animal breeds with higher lean : fat and meat : bone ratios, for crops resistant to the teeming world of parasites. Capturing the exquisite scent, the colours and form beautiful of a rose is in effect applied genetics and it has even been applied to man. For example, Frederick the Great, Emperor of Prussia, to maintain a supply of very tall men for his guards—his Prussian Guards averaged seven feet in height—ordered them to marry very tall women to produce offspring carrying the genes of great height. In recent times, however, research and experiment in genetic control, more in the nature of active interference with genetic composition, has developed sufficiently to begin yielding results. It is self‐evident that in the field of micro‐organisms, active interference or manipulations will produce greater knowledge and understanding of the gene actions than in any other field or by any other techniques. The phenomenon of “transferred drug resistance”, the multi‐factorial resistance, of a chemical nature, transferred from one species of micro‐organisms to another, from animal to human pathogens, its role in mainly intestinal pathology and the serious hazards which have arisen from it; all this has led to an intensive study of plasmids and their mode of transmission. The work of the Agricultural Research Council's biologists (reported elsewhere in this issue) in relation to nitrogen‐fixing genes and transfer from one organism able to fix nitrogen to another not previously having this ability, illustrates the extreme importance of this new field. Disease susceptibility, the inhibition of invasiveness which can be acquired by relatively “silent” micro‐organisms, a better understanding of virulence and the possible “disarming” of organisms, particularly those of particular virulence to vulnerable groups. Perhaps this is looking for too much too soon, but Escherichia coli would seem to offer more scope for genetic experiments than most; it has serotypes of much variability and viability; and its life and labours in the human intestine have assumed considerable importance in recent years. The virulence of a few of its serotypes constitute an important field in food epidemiology. Their capacity to transfer plasmids—anent transfer of drug resistance— to strains of other organisms resident in the intestines, emphasizes the need for close study, with safeguards.