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Many organizations are embarking upon knowledge management initiatives to enhance their competitiveness. While there has been a significant amount of multidisciplinary research in this area, the evidence from surveys of practitioners indicate that a large proportion of company projects focus on the implementation of technology‐based solutions without consideration of the structural and contextual issues. Many academic authors have presented a variety of different models for knowledge management but have often failed to relate these to the requirements of practitioners. This paper presents a model of knowledge management derived from a synthesis of current literature. The model emphasizes the need for knowledge evaluation within a knowledge management approach and describes, using a case study, how this might be achieved.

The objective of this work is to empirically investigate the design of a service delivery system that supports the provision of modular service logistics offerings.

An in-depth single-case study relying on interview data and extensive documentary evidence is carried out in the business-to-business (B2B) logistics sector. Three main analytical techniques are used to make sense of the qualitative data: thematic analysis, process mapping and the application of modular operators.

A modular service delivery system comprises three types of processes that collectively deliver modular offerings. The platform consists of core processes that enable the collection, transport and delivery of physical items for all offerings (modular and non-modular). Dedicated modular processes are mandatory and exclusive to individual modular offerings. Optional modular processes are shared across several modular offerings. Interfaces regulate physical (e.g. parcels or parts) and information (e.g. booking data) inputs provided by the customer in order to control the interdependencies within these different process types.

The identification of three process types and their interdependencies provides detailed insights into how managers can design modular logistics services that benefit from economies of scale and meet increasingly variable customer requirements. The importance of well-designed interfaces among the customers, the service offering and the service delivery system is highlighted.

This study extends previous modularity studies in service logistics. It is the first study to apply modular operators to determine the presence of modularity in the service delivery system and to establish the role of different process types in enabling modularity in the service delivery system.

This study aims to develop and empirically validate the concept of experience capability, which represents an organisation's ability to be adept at managing the customer experience. Organisations that build an experience capability develop an expertise in deploying a set of resources and routines to understand, evaluate and improve how they interact with customers across all the points of contact.

A rigorous process was employed to identify, operationally define, evaluate and validate six dimensions reflecting experience capability. The dimensions were developed and validated using relevant literature, expert interviews, item-sorting techniques, a pilot survey and two surveys, providing a degree of certainty that the intellectual insights are generalisable.

The experience capability concept is identified as comprising six dimensions that are informed by 27 measurement items. The six dimensions are employee training, employee empowerment, employee evaluation, experience performance management, cross-functional work and channel integration. The findings provide evidence suggesting that the multi-item measurement scale exhibits appropriate psychometric properties.

The empirically validated 27-item measurement scale provides practitioners with an approach to evaluate and improve their organisation's experience capability. It permits both longitudinal comparisons of individual organisations and competitive benchmarking both within and across industry sectors. The approach alerts managers to the critical operational areas that should be measured and provides a structured method to pursue competitive advantage through customer experience capability.

Developing valid and reliable measurement scales is an essential first step in effective theory-building. The paper proposes a theoretical foundation for the experience capability construct and validates a corresponding measurement scale. The scale was developed carefully to achieve the specificity required to undertake meaningful practitioner-centric assessment while maintaining relevance across sectorial contexts. The results complement existing customer-centric experience research by providing distinct intellectual insights from a practitioner perspective. The developed scale permits future intellectual investigation through capability comparisons both within and between companies in different industries/sectors.

The purpose of this paper is to provide novel theoretical insight into service delivery system (SDS) design. To do so, this paper adopts a customer journey perspective, using it as a frame to explore dimensions of experience quality that inform design requirements.

This study utilises UK Patient Opinion data to analyse the stories of 200 cancer patients. Using a critical incident technique, 1,207 attributes of experience quality are generated and classified into 17 quality dimensions across five stages of the customer (patient) journey.

Analysis reveals both similarity and difference in dimensions of experience quality across the patient journey: seven dimensions are common to all five journey stages, from receiving diagnosis to end of life care; ten dimensions were found to vary, present in one or several of the stages but not in all.

Limitations include a lack of representativity of the story sample and the impossibility to verify the factual occurrence of the stories.

Adopting a patient journey perspective can improve the practitioner understanding of the design requirements of SDS in healthcare. The results of the study can be applied by managers to configure SDS that achieve a higher quality of patient care throughout the patient journey.

This paper extends existing literature on SDS design by adopting a customer journey perspective, revealing heterogeneity in experience quality across the customer journey currently unaccounted for in SDS design frameworks. Specifically, the findings challenge homogeneity in extant SDS design frameworks, evidencing the need for multiple, stage-specific SDS design requirements.

The Industry 4.0 phenomenon offers opportunities and challenges to all business models. Despite the literature advances in this field, little attention has been paid to the interplay of smart production systems (SPSs), big data analytics (BDA), cyber-physical systems (CPS), internet of things (IoT), and the potential business process management (BPM) improvements. This study aims to identify the main drivers and their implications for improved BPM.

This study employed a narrative literature review of studies concerning smart-production-systems-related issues in the context of Industry 4.0.

The study identified 26 drivers from the literature associated with SPSs that have an impact on improved BPM. These drivers are presented in an integrative framework considering BDA, CPS, and the IoT.

The framework's component integration is yet not tested. However, this study offers a significant theoretical contribution by presenting drivers that can be utilised to develop constructs, exploring critical factors related to the interplay of SPSs and improved BPM, and shading light on Industry 4.0's main elements. The study also makes suggestions for further research.

The proposed framework, with its 26 drivers, provides insights for practitioners and decision-makers interested in gaining an in-depth understanding of the complexities of SPSs and improved BPM.

This study integrates BDA, CPS, and IoT into a framework with 26 drivers associated with SPSs to improve BPM.

This paper aims to develop a conceptual resilience‐based model that takes account of the competing success factors of patient safety, finance, improvement targets and staff workload in NHS hospitals in the UK.

A safe working envelope model was developed from the literature and adapted for use in the NHS. The proposition that finance and targets receive greater management attention was then tested by a pilot study using content analysis of risk management documents of four NHS hospitals.

The need to succeed on finance and targets received greater attention in the risk management documents than patient safety and staff workload.

This is a pilot study only, using content analysis of risk management documents from four hospitals to see whether the model developed from the literature warrants further study.

Using the proposed safe working model will allow the setting and monitoring of failure and marginal boundaries and make more explicit the pressures from the competing success factors in public sector hospitals in the UK.

The development of the conceptual model using ideas from resilience engineering and applying them to NHS hospital management provides a policy and practical approach to improving patient safety.

The paper seeks to evaluate the drivers of customer satisfaction (CS), specifically exploring the impact of business process management (BPM) on service quality and CS.

A longitudinal case study uses quantitative and qualitative data to test six propositions derived from current literature.

Analysis confirms the role of staff satisfaction and service quality as key drivers of CS, suggested in the service profit chain, but proposes a more complex set of relationships. Technical service quality (TSQ) is found to play a critical role in determining CS and a strong causal link is found between TSQ and BPM.

Findings are based on a single case, in a fast‐changing sector.

Findings suggest that managers should focus on TSQ as a priority. End‐to‐end BPM is identified as a key enabler of TSQ.

The research challenges the adequacy of the service profit chain and the emphasis on soft factors evident in much of the existing marketing and service operations literature. In examining the drivers of CS, this research offers an alternative perspective which places BPM at the centre of the debate.

Describes research undertaken to evaluate the appropriateness of strategic performance measurement (PM) system development processes for small‐ and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs). An evaluation is undertaken of ten PM approaches found in the literature. To facilitate this evaluation a typology is presented which synthesises current theory. This evaluation resulted in the identification of a process, based on its congruency to the theoretical model, which is used for an empirical investigation. Empirical data from SMEs is collected and analysed using the typology. This indicates a discontinuity between current theory and the requirements of practitioners in small companies. The paper concludes with a number of recommendations to facilitate the development of appropriate PM processes for SMEs.