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Obesity leads to increased mortality and morbidity among children, as well as when they turn adults. Melding marketing theories in social influence and message framing, this study aims to examine how compliance versus conformance social influence, each framed either prescriptively or proscriptively, may guide children’s choice of healthy versus unhealthy food.

This study conducted two experiments in a Pakistani junior school. Experiment 1 exposed children to either a prescriptive or a proscriptive compliance influence. Experiment 2 involved a 2 (prescriptive vs proscriptive compliance influence) × 2 (supportive vs conflicting conformance-influence) between-subjects design. Participants in both studies answered an online survey after being exposed to the social-influence messages.

Experiment 1 showed proscriptive was stronger than prescriptive compliance influence in nudging children to pick fruits (healthy) over candies (unhealthy). However, frequency of fruits dropped as susceptibility to compliance strengthened. Experiment 2 found that a proscriptive compliance influence reinforced by a supportive conformance-influence led to most children picking fruits. However, a conflicting conformance influence was able to sway some children away from fruits to candies. This signalled the importance of harmful peer influence, particularly with children who were more likely to conform.

Childhood is a critical stage for inculcating good eating habits. Besides formal education about food and health, social influence within classrooms can be effective in shaping children’s food choice. While compliance and conformance influence can co-exist, one influence can reinforce or negate the other depending on message framing.

In developing countries like Pakistan, institutional support to tackle childhood obesity may be weak. Teachers can take on official, yet informal, responsibility to encourage healthy eating. Governments can incentivise schools to organise informal activities to develop children’s understanding of healthy consumption. Schools should prevent children from bringing unhealthy food to school, so that harmful peer behaviours are not observable, and even impose high tax on unhealthy products or subsidise healthy products sold in schools.

This study adopts a marketing lens and draws on social influence and message framing theory to shed light on children’s food choice behaviour within a classroom environment. The context was an underexplored developing country, Pakistan, where childhood obesity is a public health concern.

Organizations rely on their business processes to achieve their business objectives and ensure compliance with relevant laws and regulations. Hence, conformance to process specifications is essential to remain compliant. Various factors influence an organization’s ability to operate in conformance to its process specifications. This study investigates the influence of business process management (BPM)-supportive culture and individual process orientation on process conformance.

A construct was created for perceived process conformance and two constructs were selected from literature to represent BPM-supportive culture and individual process orientation. A survey was conducted with 178 employees of a global enterprise, hypotheses were formulated, and a statistical model was constructed and validated.

Results pinpoint the key role of the BPM-supportive culture in influencing both individual process orientation and conformance. Individual process orientation is also found to have a significant influence on process conformance. The findings provide additional evidence for the significance of human-related aspects of BPM in achieving BPM success.

The contributions of this paper help better understand how soft factors of BPM contribute to employees’ process conformance drawing on and relating concepts of BPM and organizational routines.

This study aims to provide empirical evidence of the association between audit committee characteristics and internal audit conformance with the International Standards for the Professional Practice of Internal Auditing (ISPPIA).

Seventy-four usable responses were received from a survey of chief internal auditors (CIAs) from Saudi companies listed on the Saudi Stock Exchange.

The results indicate that audit committee characteristics (the presence of independent members on the committee, members’ expertise in auditing and accounting and meeting with the CIA) influence internal audit conformance with the ISPPIA. Additionally, they demonstrate that such conformance is also influenced by CIA tenure.

The findings of this study also have significant implications for audit committees wishing to improve their overall effectiveness, by identifying the impact of the committee’s characteristics on internal audit conformance with the ISPPIA.

The results add to the literature on internal audit standards by introducing a Middle Eastern perspective and simultaneously providing insights for companies in their attempts to adhere to the international standards, hence, supporting efforts towards good corporate governance.

The purpose of this paper is to design a model of the port performance metrics for improving the quality in ports by integration of six sigma and system dynamics (SD) approach.

The port performance is measured by the sigma value (SV), the process capability indices (PCIs), and the cost of poor quality (COPQ) as the performance metrics. A port is a complex system that requires SD as an appropriate tool to simulate the model dynamically. The performance metrics focus on measuring the port performance in the entire flow of material in the cargo handling process.

With this model, the changing of the SV, the PCIs, and the COPQ can be identified and analyzed the results to improve the performance in ports. These metrics are utilized to eliminate “waste” in the cargo handling process at ports. This waste consists of lost and damaged cargo, equipment and transporter breakdown, and equipment and transporter delay time. The port performance metrics model can assess the causal relationships in ports as a complex system.

Studies on integration between the six sigma model and SD in ports are few and relatively limited. The port’s performance can be measured directly using the SV, the PCIs, and the COPQ in the simulation. The port performance metrics model will give the decision makers to make some scenarios to contribute for the optimization of performance in ports.

The purpose of this research is to examine how service enablers such as resource management and human resource management practices, identified in prior research as vital, influence both conformance quality and productivity performance. The paper also aims to study how the level of customer contact, a major service differentiator, could moderate the influence of such practices on performance.

Using sample data from 249 service firms in China, hierarchical a regression analyses is employed to test the research questions.

The results indicate that there are common resource management and human resource management practices that positively affect both conformance quality and productivity. Importantly, besides its direct and positive effect on conformance quality and on productivity performance, the level of customer contact was found to have a contingency effect on the relationships between resource management or human resource management practices, and conformance quality or productivity performance.

Future research should consider including other developing countries, more service industries, and a longitudinal study if possible.

Implications of the findings on theory in services and managerial practice in the context of China are offered.

The theoretical value of the research lies in identifying the factors that simultaneously affect both conformance quality and productivity (which are often seen as competing goals) in service sectors, and their dependency on the level of customer contact.

The purpose of this paper is to examine affect of consumer susceptibility to interpersonal influence (CSII) and demographics on ecologically conscious consumer behaviour (ECCB).

Data were collected through mall intercept technique in six cities across India.

ECCB and CSII scales were applicable in Indian context. Factor analysis revealed two factors for ECCB scale: ecologically conscious purchase behaviour and green product attitudes. Normative, informative influence of CSII and income were predictors to ecologically conscious purchase behaviour. Normative influence emerged as predictor to green attitudes.

The study focuses itself only on CSII factors. It does not examine influence of variables like personal values, risk perception, and personality on ECCB. It does not examine role of consumers’ attitude towards conservation of energy and natural resources.

The findings can be of immense use to firms marketing green brands in India. Social group acceptance and conformance is important for Indian consumers; advertising and promotional campaigns should use social groups for marketing green products. Consumer involvement and engagement can be created through social networking web sites. Ecologically concerns should be rewarded in order to encourage consumers to adopt green attitudes.

Green marketing and ecologically conscious behaviour are upcoming research areas in India. There is limited research to understand Indian consumers’ concerns about environment. ECCB and CSII scales were used as it was assumed that using scales which have been tested and validated in other cultures would give reliable results.

The purpose of this paper is to examine influence of past environmental attitudes, social and personal environmental norms, social influence, and green self-identity on Indian consumers’ green buying behaviour.

Data were collected through self-administered survey method by contacting respondents through mall intercept technique in six cities across India.

The findings suggest that green self-identity, peer influence, and past green buying behaviour influence the decision to purchase green product. Consumers’ self-identification with environment-friendly traits was a major predictor to green buying behaviour.

Influence of social groups, personal norms, and self-identity were examined. However, the study did not focus on any specific brand or product category. Issues like green brands, price sensitivity, and trust can be examined.

The findings can help firms in understanding Indian consumers’ predisposition and attitudes towards green products. Green products should be related to individual’s identity and ecological beliefs. Firms can modify their marketing communication strategies by linking green products them with social and personal factors.

Influence of factors like past environmental attitudes, social and personal norms on green buying have not been examined in Indian context. The study adds to existing literature by applying self-construal theory in explaining green buying behaviour.

The purpose of the paper is to present a proactive quality costs measurement methodology, which describes the value of quality improvements and the implication of this value on customers' perception regarding the value of the product.

By describing the perceived customer value in a dynamic term, it becomes possible to derive an analytical model that recognizes the implication of a company's efforts to improve design quality and conformance quality on product value as perceived by the customers. Quality costs as a performance indicator of improved design quality and conformance quality (as the results of prevention and appraisal activities) can be expressed in terms of value (i.e. a trade‐off between benefits and sacrifices), where the benefits of the improvement include higher product quality and reduction of failure costs. The sacrifices include the costs to perform improvement activities (i.e. prevention and appraisal costs). Expressing quality costs in this way thus establishes a link between a producer's efforts to improve quality and the way customers perceive the value of the product. The developed methodology of proactive quality cost measurement has been applied for collecting, measuring, and reporting quality costs in a Swedish wood‐flooring manufacturing company.

Transforming quality cost measurements into value provides a better explanation regarding the effect of prevention and appraisal activities on the quality improvement indicators. Thus, the value of quality improvements is a measure of return on quality improvements (ROQI), which indicates whether the quality improvement efforts gave higher, fair, or lower return.

This paper develops and discusses a model of customer value by accommodating its relative nature, and presents a proactive way of measuring quality costs (i.e. value‐oriented and customer‐oriented).

The dynamics of quality performance and quality cost are gaining renewed interest in quality management literature. Using large sample secondary data, the purpose of this paper is to build up empirical evidence for increasing quality performance in manufacturing in the long-run. The authors then examine whether it is possible to reduce internal and external failure cost over time without increasing prevention and appraisal expenditures in return. Finally, a scale effect in reducing quality cost is measured to clarify the long-run dynamics between quality cost and quality performance.

The authors conduct statistical analysis on a large sample secondary data set to reveal relationships between total cost of quality, its components and overall quality performance.

Significantly higher quality performance and lower quality cost are observed in the long-run. Quality costs grow less than half as fast as sales volume, pointing to a significant scale effect in quality cost reduction.

Businesses can use these implications for targeting failure costs and budgeting appraisal and prevention costs. Based on company-specific historical learning behavior through prevention and appraisal activities, an increasingly reliable prognosis of failure cost shall be possible.

For the first time, quality performance and cost dynamics are assessed using a secondary data set with more than 400 observations. A scale effect for quality cost reduction is measured. The results are of great importance to quality management practice and research.

This study investigates the quantitative aspect of the various strains of operational excellence (OE) and competitive-potential (CP) in the SME sector. It has five steps, i.e., identifying the key performance constructs of OE and their hypothesized relationship pattern from literature, validating these constructs through factor analysis, formalizing their empirical relationships by structural-equation-modeling (SEM), path analysis of performance constructs with the empirical results, and lastly proposing a framework for OE deployment in SMEs.

Data for the deployment scores of operational excellence procedures (OEPs) were collected through a structured questionnaire survey. Nine hundred participants from a stratified random sample were approached for the survey, and 473 responses were received. Sample stratification was based on Gender, Education, Experience, Position, Department and Industry. Respondents had 5–30 years of experience managing manufacturing operations, holding the manager position and above.

The path analysis of the structural model provides unique insights into OE's practical aspects in SMEs (small and medium enterprises). For example, Contractual-conformance and Process-efficiency play pivotal roles as both have a significant positive impact on CP. Supplier efficacy, Consistency and Product-excellence do not improve CP unless mediated by Contractual-conformance or Process-efficiency.

The study provides important implications for academia, policymakers and managers. The study identifies and validates the operational excellence key performance practices and proposes a framework for manufacturing organizations. SME managers can follow the framework to develop effective operational excellence strategies to help them achieve their organizational goals. Additionally, the study emphasizes the need for continuous culture in SMEs, which will help to support operational excellence deployment. Overall, the implications presented in the study will help SMEs to enhance their competitiveness and operational performance.

The study explores the empirical investigation of the operational excellence deployment in SMEs. The study uses a mixed method approach for research design, including qualitative and quantitative approaches, and uses SEM to test the proposed framework. Validation of OE's six key performance constructs and establishing their empirical relation is an attempt to advance the Operations excellence theory. Unlike large enterprises, SMEs demonstrate an incohesive response to the practices pertaining to Supplier efficacy, Consistency and Product-excellence. This unique response pattern requires special treatment, which is incorporated into the proposed framework.