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A E Autoparts export distribution arrangements are based on a computer‐controlled system which integrates order processing and the preparation of shipping documentation. Autoparts estimate that their procedures save them as much as 50 per cent of the fob costs of competitors.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the position of sport management education (SME) in relation to employment in the sport fitness industry and if a shift towards a greater emphasis on business and management module teaching is justified or conversely a greater utilisation of the rich data being generated by sport management researchers can be applied to the vocational development of sport management students.

The study was conducted in two parts. Part 1 consisted of interviews with the author by an interviewer to explore their industry experiences, the author’s experience of entrepreneurial sport industry business and intrapreneurial sport teaching. The resultant data have been distilled into a series of paradigms, including employing sport industry staff and teaching sport management. Part 2 triangulates part 1 with the managerial experience of sports and leisure centre managers to develop a qualitative study. Sports and leisure centre managers were interviewed regarding candidate and employee competences judged as extreme examples of sport management knowledge and understanding.

Four themes emerged, such as alignment, underpinning subject-specific knowledge, a voice from the sport industry in developing SME and postgraduate opportunities for work-based learning.

A small-scale study that requires further research in each of the three areas: sport spectator, sport participation and elite performer management.

The sport centre interview instrument, with some refinements, could form the basis of an improved system to gain rich data from industry members of higher education business advisory groups. The developed data collection tool could increase the effective collection of data from a wider cohort.

The approach has produced an adapted category of pedagogy. Employability inspired teaching (EiT) is an original terminology describing the subject-specific content that leads to improved opportunities for subject (sport) industry employment.

Environmental pollution has emerged as a major concern in the 21st century following the introduction of sustainable development (SD) by the year 2030, whereby one of the predominant goals is related to the manufacturing industry. In Malaysia, the automotive industry is acknowledged as the backbone driving for economic growth and recognised as a source of environmental deterioration. Therefore, eco-innovation is, thus, introduced as one of the efforts for minimised environmental effects, reduced social impact and firm value sustenance. In particular, eco-product innovation is one of the renowned environmental innovation dimensions and displays high adoption and diffusion rates in developed countries due to green awareness and government financial assistance. However, developing countries such as Malaysia show relatively low adoption of such practices amongst companies, whereby most of the efforts are driven by the governments, supplier and customer demands. Therefore, this paper aims to delineate the factors of voluntary initiatives undertaken by the Malaysian automotive and auto parts industry towards eco-product innovation.

The research drew from the micro-level perspective, thus using dynamic capabilities (DC) constructs and environmental management system (EMS) strategy variables. The constructs included technology collaboration, green human resources and eco-culture, while the variables denoted formal EMS and top management support. Survey data were obtained from 242 entities within the Malaysian automotive and auto parts industry, which were subjected to analysis via confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modelling.

The findings revealed the moderating role played by eco-product innovation for the association linking EMS strategy and sustainability development, while no moderator effects were observed between DC and sustainability development. Thus, future research can be performed in the meso and macro-level areas by using qualitative research across different sectors.

This paper explicates novel literature content, particularly for the field of eco-product innovation; it positions an empirical analysis from the micro-level perspective regarding the antecedence of DC and environmental strategy towards eco-product innovation and SD, mainly in the automotive industry.

This paper approaches the dynamics of supply chain resilience from the company from customer's point of view, seeking to illuminate which mechanisms and practices are used (intentionally or unintentionally) to increase the resilience of their critical suppliers, and thus to evaluate the impact of these mechanisms and practices on its entire supply chain (SC).

The authors explore some emerging developments in organizational resilience with an embedded case study of a group of focal companies operating in the automotive SC. Therefore, semi-structured interviews have been conducted with buyers and sellers using content analysis, in the light of the prospect theory and the resource dependency theory.

The results indicate the existence of a resilience sheaf that runs through the entire supply chain, formed by a set of 11 formal mechanisms and informal practices.

This resilience sheaf can guide managers thorough SC resilience development by taking its components as a reference and optimizing the use of resources both effectively and efficiently.

SC resilience has been conceptualized as a function of an organization's situational awareness, the identification and management of key vulnerabilities and the ability to successfully react in a complex, dynamic and interconnected environment. These propositions highlight the features of both internal and external mechanisms to enhance organizational resilience.

This study aims to investigate the relationship between Chief Executive Officer (CEO) narcissism and firm performance. Further, it examined the moderation effects of CEO duality and top management team (TMT) and board member agreeableness on the CEO narcissism–firm performance relationship.

The study is based on survey data from 373 CEOs in the automobile industry in India. The paper used mixed method research where CEO narcissism and TMT agreeableness has been measured using survey instruments, other data such as firm performance has been captured using secondary sources.

The study confirms that the relationship between CEO narcissism and firm performance is curvilinear, meaning that narcissism can positively impact firm performance to a point, but may become counter-productive or ineffective beyond that. Further, CEO duality and TMT and board member agreeableness significantly impact this relationship.

This paper fulfills an identified need to study how CEO behavior can affect variance in firm performance. The authors discuss theoretical and practical implications and offer suggestions for future research.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the manifold linkages connecting the Toyota Production System (TPS) back to the Gilbreths and others, and to determine how these have contributed to enterprise‐wide best practice. Industrial engineering (IE) theory rapidly subsumed method study and thereby made considerable contributions to output in World War II (WWII). The outcome is the positing of “contemporary” IE.

Consideration is given to the Japanese Management Association (JMA) personal handshake route originated by Frank Gilbreth in which experiences were handed down in lecture note format by successive generations of industrial engineers. His interaction with the FW Taylor Scientific Management movement is a second theme. The internationally recognised “softer” approach to teaching and coaching due to Lillian Gilbreth is then discussed. Finally the Gilbreth MOI2 Process Chart is examined.

TPS has evolved over an extended period of time to achieve continuous material flow. There has been no single procedure or technical breakthrough. Much of the detail would have been familiar to the Gilbreths. These became evident in the USA and the UK auto industries soon after the First World War. Elements of JIT are recognisable even earlier in the building of the UK Crystal Palace in 1851. However the scenario of the current TPS enterprise would be new to the Gilbreths. Similarly the various ways in which the systems approach has been successfully implemented throughout the organisation would appear strange. This becomes self‐evident via a three‐axis model representation of contemporary industrial engineering.

Newly appointed Toyota executives pursuing the shopfloor based Acclimatisation Course would immediately recognise the method study based waste elimination techniques at work. As Ohno remarked, such removal merely levels the playing field. Knowledge (and above all practice) in their use should be a pre‐requisite skill for employees at all levels. This is a sometimes “hidden” secret of TPS, but dates back to Lillian Gilbreth in 1914.

The paper supports the view that effective product delivery is best driven via sound industrial engineering expertise operating within an active learning organisation. The four level prism model applied to TPS highlights its system attributes.

The paper confirms there is a continuing role for well established method study techniques to be adapted to face new challenges, and output as “contemporary” industrial engineering.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the understanding of the servitization process of typical manufacturing companies that already provide after-sales services, by identifying the phases and organizational elements that enable the delivery of more services.

A servitization maturity model for consumer durables companies is proposed. Servitization is an evolutionary process based on customer profiling, company profiling, the nature of the service, maturity of the process and process characteristics. The capacity of maintaining organizational relationships among players in the value chain describes the organizational maturity needed to advance towards the next phase. The research has been conducted as an exploratory study, in which four different case studies of consumer durables companies were performed to validate the proposed maturity model and detail each phase and the critical resources needed to become servitized.

Four category levels of organizational relationships were identified: first, company and customers; second, company and production network; third, company and market, in addition to; fourth, the internal relations of the company.

The means to evaluate companies that undergo servitization are also presented to provide a better understanding of their placement in the process and guide managers through the next necessary steps of action.

The development and application of this model allowed exploring the levels of servitization as an evolutionary process based on the relationships among players in the value chain by gathering, structuring, organizing several critical requirements and highlighting important attributes that must be examined by companies during the servitization process.

To ensure product quality within a manufacturing process, inspection processes are indispensable. One task of inspection planning is the selection of inspection characteristics. For optimization of costs and benefits, key characteristics can be defined by which the product quality can be checked with sufficient accuracy. The manual selection of key characteristics requires substantial planning effort and becomes uneconomic if many product variants prevail. This paper, therefore, aims to show a method for the efficient determination of key characteristics.

The authors present a novel Algorithm for the Selection of Key Characteristics (ASKC) based on an auto-encoder and a risk analysis. Given historical measurement data and tolerances, the algorithm clusters characteristics with redundant information and selects key characteristics based on a risk assessment. The authors compare ASKC with the algorithm Principal Feature Analysis (PFA) using artificial and historical measurement data.

The authors find that ASKC delivers superior results than PFA. Findings show that the algorithms enable the cost-efficient selection of key characteristics while maintaining the informative value of the inspection concerning the quality.

This paper fills an identified gap for simplified inspection planning with the method for the efficient selection of key features via ASKC.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the internationalization of Chinese new global players through innovation-oriented Mergers and Acquisitions (M&As).

The paper combines the analysis of East-Asian and Chinese multinationals’ international expansion within international business (IB) and innovation domains, with the “latecomer” perspective. It is a conceptual contribution, based on the role of local institutions and firm’s absorptive capacity. A theoretical framework is developed, and further elucidated with two illustrative cases of Chinese M&As abroad in the automotive sector. Implications for theoretical development and practical application are then drawn.

Chinese firms’ M&As abroad have become one of the preferential modes of developing innovation capabilities. The success of these endeavors is argued to be the result of a combination of a strong push from government industrial policies, along with significant internal knowledge assimilation and transformation capabilities.

The paper extends IB literature integrating the latecomer firms’ perspective within a novel conceptual framework, which adds to the traditional resource-based arguments about incumbent MNEs asset and knowledge-seeking internationalization modes, as well as institutional and multi-dimensional absorptive capacity perspectives.

The purpose of this paper is to show the complex positionality and the complexity that comes with the study of whiteness in South African higher education by Dutch, white academics. This complexity stems from the long-standing relationship between Dutch universities, the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VUA) in particular, with their South African counterparts, which predominantly supported apartheid with reference to a shared religious (Protestant) background.

The paper rests upon a literature review of the development of South African higher education, and an assessment of the prominent role played by the Dutch Vrije Universiteit in support of the all-white, Afrikaans Potchefstroom University (presently North-West University). The authors, who are both involved in the institutional cooperation between Vrije Universiteit and South African universities, reflect on the complexity of this relationship by providing auto-ethnographic evidence from their own (religious) biography.

The paper reflects the ambiguous historical as well as contemporary contexts and ties that bind Vrije Universiteit to South African universities, especially formerly Afrikaans-speaking ones. The ambiguity is about the comfort of sharing an identity with formerly Afrikaans-speaking universities, on the one hand, and the discomfort of historical and political complicities in a (still) segregated South African society on the other hand.

This auto-ethnographic paper breathes an atmosphere of a “coming out” that is not very common in academic writing. It is a reflection and testimony of a lifelong immersion in VUA-South African academic research relations in which historical, institutional, and personal contexts intermingle and lead to a unique positionality leading to “breaking silences” around these complex relations.