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The purpose of this paper is to address the following research question: how do the interlocking editorial advisory boards (EABs) of operations and supply chain management (OSCM) journals map out the field’s diverse academic communities and how demographically diverse is the field and its communities?

The study applies social network analysis (SNA) to web-based EAB data for 38 journals listed under operations management (OM) in the 2010 ABS Academic Journal Quality Guide.

The members of EABs of the 38 journals are divided into seven distinct communities which are mapped to the field’s knowledge structures and further aggregated into a core and periphery of the network. A burgeoning community of supply chain management academics forms the core along with those with more traditional interests. Male academics affiliated to the US institutions and to business schools predominate in the sample.

A new strand of research is opened up connecting journal governance networks to knowledge structures in the OSCM field. OM is studied separately from its reference and associated disciplines. The use of the ABS list might attract comments that the study has an implicit European perspective – however the authors do not believe this to be the case.

The study addresses the implications of the lack of diversity for the practice of OM as an academic discipline.

The confirmation of the dominance of particular characteristics such as male and US-based academics has implications for social diversity of the field.

As the first study of its kind, i.e. SNA of EAB members of OSCM journals, this study marks out a new perspective and acts as a benchmark for the future.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze whether the use of current performance tools is consistent with the specific features of social enterprises.

In a first phase, the main performance tools are divided into strategic planning tools, reporting tools and economic optimization techniques. In a second phase, 15 criteria emerge from a literature review to characterize the specific features of social enterprises. These criteria are brought together into an analytical framework, which makes it possible to analyze the relevance of each performance tool in relation to the specific features of social enterprises.

What comes out of the analysis is that the tools globally fail to account for the specific features of social enterprises. That none of them met more than half of the criteria suggests the need for new performance tools based on strong theoretical bases.

Only the main performance tools are taken into account in this study. Some tools developed specifically for social enterprises might score better if they were tested in the framework.

Managers in social enterprises often feel helpless when having to choose or develop a performance evaluation tool. This paper allows them to test whether the tools they use are well suited to social enterprises, and provides them with useful guidelines for developing new ones.

Literature on performance evaluation for nonprofits or social enterprises mostly remains conceptual or focusses on one single tool. The author fills the gap by studying a broad range of performance evaluation tools and comparing them.

Third sector organizations regularly innovate through collaboration with other organizations in order to secure resources and to increase the potential to more effectively meet each collaborator's mission. Following a review of relevant literature, the purpose of this paper is to explore and document the variety of ways that third sector organizations collaborate with other nonprofit organizations.

The paper reviews the literature regarding motivations to collaborate, barriers to collaboration, and ways to ensure that collaboration is successful. Drawing on exemplary cases of collaboration that applied for a national (USA) prize, the paper describes the range of collaborations that third sector organizations used to enhance their performance and productivity.

The analysis culminates in eight models: the fully integrated merger, partially integrated merger, joint program office, joint partnership with affiliated programming, joint partnership for issue advocacy, joint partnership with a new formal organization, joint administrative operations, and confederation.

All cases are drawn from one country in one part of the world, the USA; some models will have less veracity in other countries or contexts, and the nonprofit sectors of other countries will likely generate additional kinds of models not anticipated by the USA cases. Second, the eight models generated by the method are the result of debate, deliberation, and iterative process carried out by two coders. Other coders employing the same analytic process might generate more or fewer models.

Once nonprofit boards, staff, and other advocates understand the potential that can come with collaboration, blurring boundaries and giving up autonomy might not seem so intimidating. The practical value of our work is in reporting the wide array of options available to nonprofits – models that staff and board can use to plot their way forward.

The value of our work to research is identification of the assortment of ways that nonprofits collaborate. Future research may consider how any of the issues discussed in the literature – trust, co-opetition, resource dependence, network connectedness – vary or are conditioned by differences across these models of collaboration.

The paper documents collaboration as a viable strategy for the enhancement of performance and productivity among third sector organizations in the USA. For each model described, the paper discusses the circumstances in which they might be used, as well as the challenges and advantages associated with implementation.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a theoretical framework that explains how performance management (PM) affects the organisational effectiveness in the third sector.

The authors adopt a two stage process in developing the theoretical framework; a systematic review of literature and theoretical developments of the framework. The underlying principles for developing the theoretical framework are mainly based on prior theoretical justification and empirical research in management accounting and international development fields.

Drawing upon contingency theory, the authors propose a theoretical framework explaining how the contingency variables affect PM and organisational effectiveness in the third sector. The authors discuss the justification for contingency theory as well as its weaknesses in the PM research. The authors also highlight how a modified Performance Management and Control Framework could be used to identify PM practices in the third sector. The organisational effectiveness can be measured using the four domains the authors suggest in this paper. Finally the authors put forward propositions that can be empirically tested in future studies.

This conceptual paper opens an opportunity for future empirical research to cross-validate the model in a large survey through confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modelling.

This paper helps researchers and practitioners to understand how modern PM tools integrate with third sector characteristics to optimise the effectiveness of individual organisations.

Integrating insights across disciplines, this paper strengthens cumulative knowledge on conceptualisation of PM and effectiveness within the third sector.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the literature on third sector performance measurement system design.

A systematic literature review was undertaken. The abstracts of 917 articles identified from a database search were examined and, of these, 110 papers were put forward for full paper review. Totally, 55 papers were subsequently selected for the literature synthesis.

The findings examine the important questions of why and how the performance of third sector organizations is measured. The analysis of the sample of works suggests a potential methodological mismatch between the rationale for measuring the performance of third sector organizations and the measurement methods that are currently employed.

The study raises provocative questions about the usefulness of third sector performance measurement approaches, which may lead third sector managers to critically examine current practice.

As the papers in the synthesis are drawn from a broad range of journals, the review provides a multi-disciplinary discussion of the key themes of third sector performance measurement system design. Recent studies have been published simultaneously, suggesting that there has been limited opportunity for synthesis of this work. This study therefore offers a springboard for further research in this area.

The purpose of this paper is to seek to investigate public trust as an important factor of performance in the charitable sector, and explain the necessity of including public trust assessment in charity performance measurement.

Two focus group interviews were conducted in the UK to investigate the reasons for trust and lack of trust in charities, which contributed to the identification of the relation between public trust and charity performance measurement.

Indicators of public trust in charities are not only related to some conventional criteria for evaluating charity performance, but also shed light on “soft” factors which are relatively new criteria used to assess performance. Furthermore, measuring public trust is an indispensable supplement to existing approaches of performance assessment in the charitable sector. It remedies the drawbacks of previous studies by employing a “bottom-up” approach to evaluation that avoids the conflicting demands of different stakeholders when deciding assessment criteria.

Re-conducting the study with larger samples, combining with quantitative surveys, and applying more rigorous approach to data analysis could be helpful for improving the generalizability of the results.

The study highlights the necessity of considering public trust when measuring charity performance. Additionally, it suggests charities to make improvements of their performance based on the reasons for trust and lack of trust.

It provides insight into the public trust of charities and, for the first time, explores the applicability of measuring public trust in charity performance evaluation.

The purpose of this paper is to intend as a contribution to the performance evaluation of Third Sector organisations (TSOs). The Italian experience on the development and adoption of harmonised indicators is considered here as an example of problems and possible solutions.

Preliminary analysis shows that, in the Italian situation, two main gaps exist. The first one relates to the incomplete statistical information on the magnitude and performance of TSOs; the second is related to the lack of a set of harmonised indicators. To address these problems, two initiatives have been recently set up in Italy. On the one hand, the newly presented “National Strategy on Social Corporate Responsibility – 2012-2014” has been oriented to fill the statistical gap, by extending the compilation of socio-economic and environmental accounts to TSOs; on the other hand, a joint initiative of the Italian Statistical Institute and the CSR Manager Network Italia towards the harmonisation of the “Global Reporting Initiatives-quantitative performance indicators” and the standards of the Italian statistical system. Within the second initiative, a specific sub-set of performance indicators for TSOs is proposed and presented in this paper.

The Italian experiences reported here, together with the set of proposed indicators, can be used to improve data collection and to move towards a common framework for performance evaluation in the TSOs.

The main contribution of the proposed set of indicators is to: first, provide standard definitions and clear calculation methods; second, define quantitative measurements allowing for aggregation; and third, promote data collection and performance evaluation in a context, as the Italian one, where statistical information for TSOs is largely incomplete.

The purpose of this paper is to develop the body of knowledge in the area of sustainable supply chains by providing a critical literature review in the field of sustainable supply chain performance measurement (SSCPM) and suggesting paths for future research.

At a macro level, the evolution of the research field is analysed with the use of citation and co-citation analysis techniques. Further, the evolution of research on performance measurement (PM), supply chain PM, sustainability measurement and SSCPM is presented so as to highlight the criticalities of the research field.

The paper highlights a research field that is immature, but is growing very fast. Moreover, key issues are highlighted in order to help scholars in planning future research.

The research presented in this paper is mainly limited to work that is referred directly with PM, operations management and supply chain management. Related research, such as literature on strategy or accounting has only been partially considered, even if future researches could include it.

Research in this area is receiving large attention from both academic and practitioners due to the significant relevance of the sustainability debate and the key role of supply chains in this discussion. The body of knowledge is yet immature, and the paper provides an updated state of the art, a critical analysis of the available literature and guidelines for future research.