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This study examines the mediation effects of time-based competitiveness, cost-based competitiveness and customer performance between logistics outsourcing and financial performance.

The study relied on a questionnaire as the primary data collection instrument and further employed partial least squares structural equation modelling technique to test all formulated hypotheses.

The results demonstrate that logistics outsourcing has a significant positive impact on time-based competitiveness, cost-based competitiveness, customer performance and financial performance. Time-based competitiveness and cost-based competitiveness were both found to have a significant positive impact on financial performance; however, customer performance had no significant impact on financial performance. The mediation analysis further indicates that while both time-based competitiveness and cost-based competitiveness play mediation effects between logistics outsourcing and financial performance, customer performance plays no mediation effect between logistics outsourcing and financial performance.

The sampled firms for this study came from a single emerging country; hence, the results cannot be generalized or imported to reflect the results that may be obtained from other emerging geographical settings.

The results provide sufficient evidence for managers to turn their attention to logistics outsourcing, as a transformative business initiative, to gain time-based and cost-based competitiveness so as to improve financial performance.

The study provides significant insight and makes an additional contribution to literature in the area of logistics outsourcing, especially by collecting data from an emerging country. Modelling time-based competitiveness, cost-based competitiveness and customer performance as mediating variables between logistics outsourcing and financial performance make this work relatively different from other studies.

During a UN Commission meeting in 1983, Norwegian Prime Minister Brundtland came to state one of the most comprehensive definitions of sustainability: ‘meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’ (WCED Report, 1987). Since then, themes related to sustainability proliferated and passed beyond the ‘macro’ level by also adopting ‘mezzo’ and ‘micro’ levels as unit of analysis. To state this more specifically, a macro perspective reflects a community level point of view, while a mezzo perspective adopts organisation and institution level focus point, and a micro perspective adopts an individual level research view. Within this framework, the issue turns out to be a debate of providing sustainability to the community, to the institutions (‘business enterprise’ being one of them) and to the individuals. Such fragmentation is especially necessary in literature as it is the aggregation of research on multiple levels that will lead to seminal contributions in many respects. Literature suggests evidence of how devastating the outcomes could be when there is conflict among these different levels regarding the meaning and implications of sustainability (e.g. Baumgartner & Ebner, 2010; Linnenluecke, Russell, & Griffiths, 2009).

The paper aims to establish empirical connections between corporate real estate management (CREM) practices and organisations' sources of sustainable competitive advantage (SSCA). The alignment of CREM practices with modes of achieving competitiveness provides greater competitive advantage from CREM.

The model for sustainable competitive advantage for corporate real estate (CRE) theorising the connections between CREM practices and SSCAs was implemented in a survey of Australian CRE managers. Practices' competitive benefits are reported at the aggregated level of practice categories and illustrated with a selected category of individual practices.

The model was supported by the study's results by providing connections suggested in the model but not previously corroborated in the literature. The cost source of sustainable competitive advantage was a dominant empirical competitive mode for CREM, as it was in the model. Categories of technical CREM practices providing competitive advantage were shown to be practices for “location/site selection”, “workplace styles” and “corporate finance for CRE”.

The research's relatively small sample of organisations meant that not all practices were evident. However, the study does establish the model's usefulness for evaluating CREM's alignment with organisations' modes of competition.

For CRE and its management to fully support a competitive organisation it is essential that CREM practices align with that organisation's competitive positioning. This research evaluated a framework for CRE managers to do this.

CRE, its management, and their connections to competitiveness have seldom been studied but are important as CRE is an organisations' second largest resource. This paper's model is a significant advance in frameworks linking CREM practices to organisational competitiveness for both practitioners and also further theoretical work in the area.

The dynamics of the competitive performance of the small medium firms is an evolving field of research in the developing countries like India. The influence of the innovation on the competitive performance of the firms is still an evolving area in India. This paper aims to explore the influence of the innovation on the competitive performance. The study is based upon the agro-food processing industry of the Jammu and Kashmir state of India.

The paper is based upon the exploratory design. It uses quantitative as well as qualitative method for the firm level analysis of competitiveness. The aggregate index method has been used to construct the innovation competence and total competitive performance index. The regression analysis is used for describing the model based upon the primary data.

The results of the study provide for a significant relationship between the innovation competence and firm level competitiveness. It describes the position of the agro-food processing firms under study with respect to the innovation competence index score and total competitiveness performance index.

The paper provides for the managerial implications of strategically incubating the innovation-based competence for the firms in specific geographical areas. The policy implications in terms of developing specific clusters and incubators for incremental and radical innovations can be derived, in regional economies.

The paper discusses the issue of interaction of innovation competence and firm level competitiveness of the agro-food processing industry, which is dynamic, specifically in the developing states. The paper discussed unique methodology of using aggregate index method for defining the innovation competence and competitiveness for the firms where the consistency of data is a major issue for such a complex phenomenon.

Innovation is critical for businesses to stay competitive in today's world, as it allows them to constantly look for new ways to differentiate their products or services from their competitors as well as improve cost-effectiveness. This study explore the role of strategic human resource practices in developing organizations' competitive capabilities-differentiation and cost-effectiveness, which, improves their innovation performance to create a competitive advantage.

The authors collected data from 387 employees from 25 knowledge-intensive information technology organizations in India through a questionnaire-based survey. After checking for biases, reliability and validity, the hypothesized relationships were tested by structural equational modeling using AMOS 26.

Strategic HR practices have a significant and positive effect on innovation performance and both competitive capabilities-differentiation and cost-effectiveness. While the differentiation capability had a strong positive effect on innovation performance, cost-effectiveness capability was not significantly related to innovation performance. The differentiation capability mediates the relationship between strategic HR practices and innovation performance link, whereas the cost-effectiveness capability did not have a mediating effect.

This study provides practical insights to HR and knowledge managers to focus on development of human capital and invest in hiring, training, development, strategic performance management practices to enhance employees' knowledge behaviors, which, stimulates innovation performance.

The paper adds to the strategic HRM paradigm by clarifying the underlying process of how strategic HR practices leads to higher innovation. It affirms the vitality of choosing appropriate competitive capabilities, and supporting organizational factor for business's success. It fills an important research gap by providing original empirical evidence from knowledge intensive information technology organizations in the emerging economy of India.

Looking at the value of public libraries in society, this paper discusses actual potential and unrealised value in the Australian context. Value is analysed in relation to an increasingly competitive environment, and with particular reference to library collections and their enduring place in the services provided by libraries. In addition, measuring library performance is stressed as a significant factor in determining the value of libraries.

This study aims to fundamentally focus on the comparative advantage measurement and the trend of change in the international competitiveness of five Thai economic products exporting to the People’s Republic of China during the first half of the 2010s via the analysis of the revealed comparative advantage (RCA) index and market share.

The RCA index has been computed to show the comparative advantages of the product to a certain extent: whether it is cost-effective to produce that product in a certain location compared to opportunity cost of the resources in producing that product. The data set of number and value of five important export products from Thailand to China during 2010-2013 has been obtained from the Thai Ministry of Commerce and Thai-Chinese Business Information Centre.

The study reveals that of these five important economic products, cassava has the highest comparative advantage and continues to have a rapid growth trend, whilst computer equipment and components have been shown to have comparative disadvantage and the lowest comparative advantage index scores.

Measuring with various sophisticated indices may provide clearer results. Also, according to unavailability of data set, the four-year period may not be able to show the long-term trend of competitiveness. Future studies are encouraged to study in the longer-term period with numerous indices.

The research also provides policy implications and measures to develop each sector to enhance competitiveness.

This is the original attempt to use both indices to assess the competitiveness of important Thai exports to the Chinese market.

This paper addresses the increasing market and technological changes coming to bear on West European electronics assembly. The twin pincer forces of increasing low‐cost base competition on the one hand and greatly increased interconnect densities on the other are causing opportunities or threats dependent on one's positioning. Increasing interconnect density will reduce growth in assembled PCB surface area, over the next trade cycle, to zero. As the continuing miniaturisation of electronics gathers pace, there is an increased need for fine pitch placement lines which only certain highly utilised assembly companies can afford. Simultaneously, there are moves to the one‐stop‐shop Contract Electronics Manufacture service where the contract electronics manufacturer will provide services from chip design to full build of the electronics assembly including casing. This integrated approach to subcontract electronics manufacture will be increasingly necessary. Viewing the major market drivers, it becomes evident that the recent market contraction in Western Europe is related just as much to the maturation of electronics production as it is to the more transitory effects of the trade cycle. The results of the long‐term slow‐down in West European electronics production value can be viewed by the number of OEMs reducing their involvement in electronics assembly. Here one sees many OEMs shedding plants or/and entering contract electronics manufacture. On the other hand, many contract electronics manufacturers are recognising opportunity in buying the previously captive OEM assembly plant. The paper goes on to say that the major focus for future rationalisation will be high‐cost Germany, under attack from South East Asia, Eastern Europe, Mexico and low‐cost parts of Western Europe. Within this context it is stated that West European electronics assembly sites should be careful to avoid high volume standard technology work more easily processed in the aforementioned lower cost bases. The reasons behind these changes are the increasing proportion of circuitry going on to silicon coupled with the increased number and strength of the newly industrialising economies.

The paper seeks to examine the changes and continuities in industrial relations in post‐independence Namibia. In particular, it aims to explore some of the key elements in the process through which the distribution of the costs and rewards of economic and industrial restructuring is institutionalised.

The paper concentrates, through in‐depth interviews with key role players, on how the attempts at sustaining a durable and redistributive trade‐off between economic efficiency and social equality led to a contradictory fusion of neo‐liberal and neo‐corporatist forms of labour market regulation.

The research reveals that changes in the regulation of the labour market since independence have created opportunities for advancement and participation by groups of more skilled and organised employees, while weaker and less skilled groups have generally experienced a decline in employment conditions and the absence of collective representation. These developments reflect and reproduce patterns of racial and gender discrimination, industrial structure, trade union membership and collective bargaining across the various sectors and occupations.

The paper shows that a system of low‐skill, low‐wage and low‐trust relations – with an emphasis on cost reduction and employment “flexibility” – is fast becoming embedded in industrial relations in Namibia. Given the prevailing economic policies, industrial strategies and labour market structures, Namibia's integration into the global economy will most likely involve the increasing dislocation and exclusion of vulnerable and “peripheral” workers from the formal economy.

The paper highlights the ways in which the transformation of industrial relations in Namibia is shaped by the legacy of apartheid‐colonialism and the pressures of globalisation. Specifically, the conjunction of increasingly deregulated product markets and increasingly regulated labour markets has driven a wedge between the pursuit of short‐term objectives and the attainment of long‐term transformational goals.

This study aims to explore the gaps concerning the organizational operant resources (OORs) of logistics service providers (LSPs) expected in outsourcing relationships. The study considers the views of both manufacturing firms (M-firms) and LSPs in India and DACH region (Germany, Austria and Switzerland) seeking gaps within and across regions.

This research employed a survey targeting executives from large M-firms and LSPs in both India and DACH. The perceptions about the importance and improvement expectations of 17 OORs are analyzed. A modified version of importance-improvement analysis (A-B), a novel comparative A-B analysis (CABA) method, has been proposed to identify the importance and improvement gaps in OORs between M-firms and LSPs within and across India and the DACH region.

There are more gaps between M-firms and LSPs in India compared to DACH. Cross-country comparisons reveal that LSPs in India and DACH have similar perceptions concerning the OORs, but M-firms in India have significantly higher improvement expectations than those in DACH.

This study proposes an analytical approach that enables managers to identify improvement areas and better align with their outsourcing relationship partners. It also highlights aspects that need to be considered while entering emerging markets such as India.

The analysis approach using CABA is novel. Also, among the cross-country studies, this is the first to compare outsourcing relationships in India with the DACH region while involving both users' and service providers' perspectives.