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The purpose of this paper is to explore the concept of supply chain quality management (SCQM) and to propose a research model that considers the impact of SCQM practices on firm performance.

Based on a comprehensive literature review, SCQM most relevant practices were analyzed and selected. These practices were categorized into four dimensions: upstream (supplier assessment, supplier quality management (QM)), downstream sides of a supply chain (customer focus), internal process (product/service design, process management and logistics) and support practices (top management support, human resource management, information and supply chain integration). The measurement instrument of firm performance was also developed, including three aspects: operational performance, customer satisfaction and financial performance.

An innovative conceptual framework that provides a comprehensive picture covering core dimensions of SCQM and various aspects of firm performance was proposed. This conceptual framework can be used as “a guideline” for theory building and measurement instrument development of SCQM and firm performance. More importantly, on the road to gain a further insight, an extensive structural model that identifies direct and indirect relationships between SCQM and firm performance was also developed. Practitioners/managers can apply this model as “a road map” for implementing SCQM practices.

It is necessary to test the rationality of these models by using empirical studies in different contexts.

The integration of quality and supply chain management still remains limited in the literature. Therefore, it is necessary to have a more focussed approach in assessing QM issues within the internal and external supply chain contexts. This study concentrates on the practices which improve quality aspects of the supply chain, known as SCQM practices. Proposed research models in this paper not only fill out the voids in the literature, but also contribute with conceptual frameworks for theory building in SCQM and firm performance. The authors also expect that this research can offer a useful guidance for measuring and implementing SCQM practices as well as facilitate further studies in this field.

In the realm of innovation systems and technology transfer (TT), the emergence of open innovation and complex market dynamics has amplified innovation intermediaries’ prominence of their role and involvement in TT projects. This study delves into private consultants’ involvement in TT projects, namely in what got them involved by the project’s key stakeholders.

An iterative two-phased research approach was followed, including exploratory interviews and a quantitative case study of a consultancy firm engaged in 219 TT projects.

Five main key motivators were found to lead TT stakeholders to involve private consultants in their TT projects, being the most relevant, the proactivity of private consultants.

The case study and results provide an alternative perspective of TT endeavours, emphasising the importance given by TT stakeholders (mostly recipient companies) to private consultants’ involvement as innovation intermediaries.

Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis is a powerful tool to measure and specify the problems with diagnostic performance in medicine. Describes this analysis and the importance of the index area under ROC curve, using some examples to demonstrate its application. The study was conducted on two sets of new‐borns with very low birth weight, coming from neonatal intensive care units from Portuguese hospitals. The first application uses correlated samples, and aims to define which of the five indices of clinical seriousness can be considered the best to evaluate the risk of death for babies with very low birth weight. In the second application, regarding independent samples, compares four Portuguese hospitals, the aim being to identify the neonatal intensive care unit which presents the best performance in terms of care to the new‐borns, i.e. evaluated through the comparison of the clinical severity indices.

The purpose of this paper is to use the kernel method to produce a smoothed receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve and show how baby gender can influence Clinical Risk Index for Babies (CRIB) scale according to survival risks.

To obtain the ROC curve, conditioned by covariates, two methods may be followed: first, indirect adjustment, in which the covariate is first modeled within groups and then by generating a modified distribution curve; second, direct smoothing in which covariate effects is modeled within the ROC curve itself. To verify if new-born gender and weight affects the classification according to the CRIB scale, the authors use the direct method. The authors sampled 160 Portuguese babies.

The smoothing applied to the ROC curves indicates that the curve's original shape does not change when a bandwidth h=0.1 is used. Furthermore, gender seems to be a significant covariate in predicting baby deaths. A higher value was obtained for the area under curve (AUC) when conditional on female babies.

The challenge is to determine whether gender discriminates between dead and surviving babies.

The authors constructed empirical ROC curves for CRIB data and empirical ROC curves conditioned on gender. The authors calculate the corresponding AUC and tested the difference between them. The authors also constructed smooth ROC curves for two approaches.

A single supply chain management (SCM) practice will have a certain impact on organizational performance (OP). However, since it is placed in a system that many other practices are conducted simultaneously, the practice itself will interact with other ones (i.e. affect/be affected). As a consequence, the efficiency of the affected practice is increased and it is expected to maximize the impact of SCM practices on OP. This mechanism is named the “resonant” influence that is a new approach in the SCM literature. The purpose of this paper is to test the above mechanism toward an insight into the relationship between SCM and OP.

Two models were compared: the competitive models only exist in direct effects; and the other contains relationships between practices that are able to show the mechanism of the resonant influence, i.e. the hypothetical model. A data set gained from Vietnamese garment enterprises was used to validate the mechanism of the resonant influence.

Empirical evidence from Vietnamese garment sector showed that the competitive models could explain 42.8, 26.3 and 34 percent variance of operational performance, customer satisfaction and financial performance, respectively. In the meantime, the hypothetical model containing the resonant influence is capable to explain 69.5, 33.1 and 57.3 percent. For the impact of each SCM practice on OP, all relationships in the hypothetical model are also greater than those in competitive ones. These results supported the mechanism of the resonant influence.

This research provides an insight into the relationship between SCM practices and OP. By the resonant influence, the effectiveness of each affected SCM practice itself is magnified and OP is also increased remarkably.

Understanding the resonant influence, companies can apply this mechanism to enhance effectiveness of SCM practices at the lowest cost. To this end, the SCM practices should be implemented simultaneously as an integrated system rather than independent ones and the structural model proposed in this study is able to be used as “a guide map” for applying this mechanism.

This is one of pioneer empirical studies in the SCM literature that proposed and validated the concept of “resonant influence.”

The purpose of this paper is to create an online enterprise community for all logistics employees of Bosch Car Multimedia division in the Bosch Group, for an internal collaboration of the entire Bosch Group based on an IBM Connections platform: Bosch Connect. An additional concern, collected throughout the project, was to bring employees to join the platform, making it a tool of your daily work. The final objective is to implement and promote a tool to foster internal and external integration of the Bosch logistics community.

A case study is presented to illustrate the use of a Design for Six Sigma (DFSS) methodology to support all the process creation of a collaborative community. There are several variants of the methodology DFSS. For the context of this project, will be used the define, measure, analyze, design and verify (DMADV) methodology, that is appropriated to design services processes and it addresses specifically to the remodeling processes.

The use of DMADV methodology allows establish, systematically, a model which was in accordance with the target population needs.

Since this is a case study, it is not possible to generalize the results. Furthermore, this project was developed in a limit time (about four months). Thus, was not possible to obtain a large community.

The case study brings some evidence of how a systematic approach to the design of a online enterprise community can support designers to meet user’s needs.

A new approach is proposed to meet an online enterprise community user’s needs.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, there is no evidence the use of this methodology to support a construction of an online enterprise community.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a theoretical basis for integration of quality management (QM) and supply chain management (SCM). For that purpose, some common practices of both approaches are identified as having impact on the four balanced scorecard perspectives.

The main concepts of SCM and QM were reviewed from the literature in order to develop key practices that are common to both approaches.

The findings suggest that the synergies of QM and SCM can promote the integration of the approaches which will promote a set of significant organizational benefits.

This study focuses on the integration of QM and SCM through their common practices. This issue has not been broadly explored and for that reason this paper contributes to the understanding of the critical factors for an effective integration of supply chain QM.

Ambulance personnel face a diversity of stressful events that could be potentially traumatic, putting their health and well-being at risk. The purpose of this paper is to explore, from this group perspective, sources of stress, coping strategies and support measures.

The authors interviewed 14 ambulance workers of Portuguese Red Cross local structures from the north of Portugal. Data were analyzed according to thematic analysis procedures.

The authors identified three themes: operational and organizational factors, control and predictability; anticipating scenarios, focusing on procedures and dealing with reactions; and from undervalued support to support as routine. Dealing with human lives, the unpredictability of calls and working under pressure are the main sources of stress, causing, in some of them, insomnia, fatigue, anxiety and intrusive thoughts. Road accidents, situations involving children and cardiac arrest are the most distressing events. During events, they cope focusing on technical procedures, but after them they prefer to talk with colleagues and seek support from family and friends. All participants emphasize the inexistence of structured support measures.

It is important to develop support measures tailored to ambulance personnel’s needs, leading to enhancements of theirs work performance, health and well-being.

Contrarily to most of the studies that explore mostly PTSD and/or burnout, the authors explored, from the perspective of professionals, other dimensions such as sources of stress, coping strategies and support measures, adopting a qualitative approach, which has been rarely used.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an empirical evidence about the relationship between practices of supply chain management (SCM) and operational performance (OP).

Based on a comprehensive literature review, a set of SCM practices has been identified and selected to develop a conceptual model as well as to establish their relationship to companies’ OP. The measurement scales of the practices were developed in four steps: identification and development of initial instrument; personal interviews and Q-sort; large-scale data collection; and large-scale analysis in order to ensure unidimensionality, reliability and validity. Structural equation modeling was used to validate the model with the data were collected in Vietnamese garment enterprises.

The study consolidated relationships between the SCM practices and OP. According to the research results, these practices have a “resonant” influence on OP that can explain 52.6 percent variance of this output concept. In particular, customer focus and supplier management both direct and indirect impact on OP while top management support and process control/improvement only have indirect and direct influences on OP, respectively.

There are some limitations that can guide academics to new lines of future research: to extend the scope of the survey to include different countries and new situations, so results can be generalized; to consider the impacts of the SCM practices on the entire supply chain performance; and to explore additional factors that can further explain OP, such as operational environment, capital, technology, human resource, etc.

The authors suggest that the SCM practices should be implemented as an integrated system rather than independent practices, in which they interact with each other and improve OP.

The empirical results of this study provide an evidence to consider the SCM practices as reliable predictors for OP. According to the research, these practices interact with each other and have both direct and indirect effects on OP. In other words, through the mutual interaction among the SCM practices, they have the “resonant” influence on improving OP. Moreover, the proposed research model analyzing the relationship among SCM practices and OP and its validation using the Vietnam garment industry provided valuable insights both from theoretical and practical perspectives.