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Before introducing the articles in this special issue, and taking the First World Conference on Operations Management as an example, the author proposes a new‐conference product, an innovation in service design and implementation. He describes nine key factors which need to be taken into account in order to achieve outstanding success in this kind of service.

Reports on a joint project between IBM and the London Business School, where over 700 factories have so far been visited in an international benchmarking study. The objective has been to understand how far they have adopted manufacturing best practice and what operational benefits they have achieved. Results have been independently published in the UK, Germany and The Netherlands while a consolidated report published in November 1994 combines these with those from an additional study in Finland. While 2 per cent of these sites across Northern Europe show practice and performance that could be described as world class, almost 50 per cent are well positioned to get there. Throughout the four countries, self opinion on global competitiveness runs ahead of that suggested by their use of manufacturing best practice. The effect of different geography, industry sectors, number of employees, ownership and major customers are all seen to affect the pattern of use of best practice and the consequent operational performance.

The purpose of this paper is to explore whether and how the bullwhip effect, as found in product supply chains, might also manifest itself in services, as well as what policies can be successful for mitigating it.

A combination of analytic methods was used – inductive case analysis and analysis of data from two service supply chains in the telecom industry.

Empirical evidence from two cases was examined and provides support for the presence of a service bullwhip effect. Quantitative and qualitative case data were used to explore how this effect manifests itself in services, the distinctive drivers of the bullwhip effect in services, and the managerial actions that can either trigger or mitigate these bullwhip effects. In total, eight propositions are developed and three types of characteristics that potentially make the bullwhip effect worse in services than in manufacturing are identified: the destabilizing effects of manual rework in otherwise automated service processes; the omission of accurate and timely data on rework volumes upstream in the chain, pointing at future bullwhip effects downstream; and the lack of a supply‐chain mindset within the various departments jointly responsible for delivering the service, leading to longer delays in reacting to service bullwhips as they develop over time.

The research is based on two cases within a single industry, limiting generalizability. The propositions developed need testing in a wider set of contexts, including hybrid service and product supply chains.

The implications of this research can help organizations prevent or reduce the negative impact of planned and unplanned fluctuations in their service supply chains.

This paper explores an area that has been well researched in manufacturing, but not in services, and it contributes to both the theory and practice of service supply chains.

A number of writers in the service management literature have observed that because service quality is difficult to measure there is a danger that service organisations will neglect to measure it, despite the fact that service quality is often critical to their competitive business success. The results of an empirical research project investigating the quality measurement systems of six multi‐site UK service organisations, all of which consider themselves to differentiate on the basis of service quality, are described. Two of the organisations were found to have very few quality measures and recognised that this was a major gap in their performance measurement systems. Two had developed a range of customer‐based measures of service quality which were reported regularly and widely in the organisations. The other two companies had developed a wide range of internal and external, hard and soft quality measures. These companies used managers as well as customers to measure both tangible and intangible aspects of service. Internal measures were used to corroborate the perceptual measures drawn from customers and, conversely, the external measures were used to support service design and the setting of internal quality targets.

Although the importance of operations in reaching world‐class competitiveness has been highlighted in the operations management literature, small and medium‐sized companies (SMEs) have been found to have a poor uptake of world‐class practices. Reports on a study of 285 SMEs located in Italy, the UK, and other northern European countries. The data are taken from the MICROSCOPE facilitated self‐assessment benchmarking database, which studied operations practices and performance in small firms. The level of world‐class practices and performance was compared across companies by company size and by country of origin. Significant differences were found between “micro” companies (fewer than 20 employees) and larger companies (between 20 and 200 employees). Other significant differences were found by country, which may be attributed to differences in regional policies and infrastructures regarding small firms.

Presents the results of a study examining differences in world‐class manufacturing practices and performance between the UK and Germany, based on a sample of more than 500 German and British manufacturing plants. Suggests that although German superiority persists in many areas, it may not be as great as generally assumed. While at the overall level, country‐of‐origin effects are important, many of the plant sites sampled were part of multinational organizations. Also examines how much of the difference in manufacturing practices and performance at the site level might be attributed to foreign direct investment in manufacturing. Concludes that parent origin does have a significant effect at the site level.

The purpose of this paper is to present an empirical study of supply chain flexibility, asking: what specific inter‐firm practices are used to achieve increased flexibility in buyer‐supplier pairs and in the wider supply chain or network, and how do these practices and effects interact?

The approach taken is a qualitative study of a network of 16 inter‐related manufacturing companies. Semi‐structured face‐to‐face interviews with senior representatives from each company.

A wide range of supply chain flexibility practices are identified, some confirming existing research, some additional. These are grouped into ten categories, and two over‐arching themes are found. First, firms use various forms of outsourcing and subcontracting to reduce their own need for internal flexibility. The second related insight is that, having externalised the need for flexibility, firms improve flexibility of the whole chain by engaging in committed relationships with counterparts. The authors term the ability to change counterparts “configuration flexibility” and the ability to change the timing, volume and design of supply “planning and control flexibility”. Therefore, it is suggested that firms make complex trade‐offs between the two in the interest of achieving overall supply chain flexibility. These are presented in a model to allow for future refinement and testing.

Supply chain flexibility is a strategic objective, but is not achieved by all members of supply chains aiming for as much flexibility as possible on all dimensions. The identification of the supply chain flexibility practices provides a starting point for further theoretical developments as well as for practice. In particular, further work is required to understand the interplay between the two types of flexibility identified.

Study of inter‐connected supply chains, model linking practices to performance, and the main notions of configuration and planning and control flexibilities.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the nature of context and its implications for theory and research in service.

This is a conceptual paper based on exploring existing research and theory related to context in service research.

The characteristics of service make context both important and challenging, there is great contextual diversity in service research as reflected, for example in ecosystems made up of multiple contextual variables. There is a need to identify the context-specific nature of middle range theory and the contextual logic of general theory. The authors explore the challenges of context for service theory and how we might learn from theory in a particular context and test or adapt it in other contexts.

The findings of this paper are of value to researchers seeking to develop and justify theory in service research (general, middle range or theory in use).