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The purpose of this article is to examine the structures and business models of electronic metals exchanges between 1995 and 2003.

A dialectical institutional analysis is applied to understand the exchanges’ responses to competing pressures for efficiency and legitimacy.

Although efficiency is enabled by internet technologies that provide greater information transparency and access, public metals exchanges exhibited less ability to survive than private exchanges. It is argued that private exchanges survived because traders regarded them as more legitimate. Private exchange models allowed existing traditional relationships involving trust and privacy to continue, whereas public exchanges did not.

The institutional analysis complements economic analyses of the role and structure of intermediaries in B2B electronic commerce.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a profile of the environment for development of Small and Medium Enterprises (hereinafter referred to as SMEs) in Sichuan, China. Focus group discussions and case analyses were used to diagnose problems that SMEs encountered in technology implementation and institutional innovation in Sichuan. Data from a layered sample survey was used to assess how the environment could influence the growth of SMEs and to examine what the SMEs need for their future development. The findings indicate that market success for the SMEs was mainly a function of market development/low labor cost/high efficiency/ and operational methods. Failure was generally caused by a lack of funds and/or market fraud. The results also suggest that the environment needs to be improved mainly on government efficiency and market disciplines. The research also gave policy suggestions that local government should conduct to help the SMEs to develop especially in operation and commercialization.

The paper aims to explore how supply chain performance management (PM) is affected by the decisions made in the enterprise resource planning (ERP) system lifecycle phases.

Data were collected in a multiple case study of four manufacturing companies.

Four PM activities and three ERP system lifecycle phases were described and analyzed. Eight propositions were generated from theory and the case analyses. Detailed demand specifications could have improved target setting and reporting possibilities, PM education and training seem to be important in both the implementation and the use phase and supply chain PM is highly affected in the use phase.

The paper is explorative. A required next step would be to test the generated propositions on a larger population.

Propositions of what supply chain PM issues manufacturing companies should consider in the ERP system selection, implementation and use phases are presented. The results indicate that a lot of supply chain PM improvements can be realized within the use phase of an existing ERP system.

No previous paper has focused upon how to consider supply chain PM when implementing ERP systems. This is needed because previous studies have identified ERP systems as obstacles for supply chain PM.

This paper aims to present an analysis of the effectiveness of lean techniques and their applications in the supply chain using a survey administered across multiple industries. The objective of this research is to assess the performance of lean based on the specific techniques and implementation methods used, analyze strategies for implementing lean into the supply chain, and to analyze the reasons for both their success or failure.

Through a survey administered across multiple industries to individuals familiar with lean concepts and techniques, lean performance is assessed both within the organization and their supply chain based on the specific techniques and strategies for implementation.

Organizations indicated that training their suppliers in lean methodologies provided significant time and financial benefits.

Some implications for deploying lean in the supply chain in a variety of industries are discussed. A more extensive survey with a larger respondent pool will provide greater insight and a more statistically significant quantitative analysis.

Prior research has focused mainly on the effect of continuous improvement practices on performance. In contrast, this research collected data through a survey administered across multiple industries and analyzed the effectiveness of specific lean techniques and their application in the supply chain.

This paper first aims to examine how business process change decisions (BPCDs) were implemented in a government organisation bound by tightly coupled temporal constraints (TTCs). Second, it focuses on how to achieve optimal and efficient BPCDs that require tight compliance with regulators’ temporal constraints. Finally, it formulates a rigorous framework that can facilitate the execution of optimal BPCDs with maximum efficiency and minimal effort, time and cost.

Decision-making biases by individuals or groups in organisations can impede optimal BPC implementation; to demonstrate this, a case study is investigated and the formulated framework is applied to tackle these failings.

The case study analysis shows 76 per cent of the BPCDs implemented were inefficient, mostly because of poor decisions, and these resulted in negative ripple effects. In response, the newly developed hierarchical change management structure (HCMS) framework was used to empower organisations to execute high-velocity BPCDs, enabling them to handle any temporal constraints imposed by regulators or other exogenous factors. The HCMS framework was found to be highly effective, scoring an average improvement of more than 100 per cent when measured using decision quality dimensions. This paper would be of value for business executives and strategic decision makers engaging with BPC.

The HCMS framework has been applied in a single case study as a proof of concept. Future research could extend its application to broader domains that have multi-attribute structures and environments. The evaluation processes of the proposed framework are based on subjective metrics. Causal links from the framework to business process metrics will provide a more complete performance picture.

The outcome of this research assists in formulating a systematic BPCD framework that is otherwise unavailable. The practical use of the proposed framework would potentially impact on quality outcomes for organisations. The model is derived from decision trees and analytical hierarchical processes and is tailored to address this problematic area. The proposed HCMS framework would help organisations to execute efficient BPCDs with minimal time, effort and cost. The HCMS framework contributes to the academic literature on BPCD that leverages diverse stakeholders to engage in BPC initiatives.

The research presents a novel framework –HCMS – that provides a platform for organisations to easily determine and solve hierarchical decision structure problems, thereby allowing them to efficiently automate and institutionalise optimal BPCDs.

This study aims to gain insight into factors that impact employee readiness to change and organizational change management. Therefore, an integrative research model is developed with the combination of perceived competence, perceived relatedness, perceived autonomy, codification strategy and personalization strategy to investigate employee readiness to change. The research model tests the mediating role of employee readiness to change between factors underpinned self-determination theory, knowledge management strategy and organizational change management. In addition to the moderating role of self-efficacy is examined between the relationship of employee readiness to change and organizational change implementation.

This research is conducted under a positive paradigm, and therefore, a quantitative research approach is incorporated to design a research strategy. The research model is empirically tested with a sample size of 361 employees working in commercial banks of Pakistan. For data analysis, the structural equation modelling approach is applied.

Empirical findings indicate that altogether perceived competence, perceived autonomy, perceived relatedness, codification and personalization strategies had explained 76.8% variance in employee readiness to change. The effect size analysis shows that codification strategy has the largest impact in determining employee readiness to change. Therefore, the relatedness of employee tasks stands at the second stage in determining employee readiness to change. The predictive relevance of the research model is computed through blindfolding procedure and revealed substantial predictive relevance in measuring employee readiness to change. The findings of the research confirmed that the relationship between employee readiness to change and organizational change implementation will be stronger when self-efficacy is higher.

The current research has several contributions to theory and practice. Theoretically, this research extends the self-determination theory with knowledge management strategy and enriches literature in employee readiness to change and organizational change management context. Practically, this research suggests that policymakers should focus on factors underpinned by self-determination theory and knowledge management model to develop a positive attitude among employees towards readiness to change. Similarly, self-efficacy is another important factor that moderates the relationship between readiness to change and change implementation and should be considered for managerial implication.

This research is significant as it integrates two unique models, namely, the self-determination framework and the knowledge management model to investigate employee readiness to change. In addition to that, the research model is extended with the moderating effect of self-efficacy between the relationship of employee readiness to change and organizational change implementation.

Within hierarchical relationships, subordinates are expected to obey the existing order and to function well. Their deviance or organisational misbehaviour is usually regarded negatively and as a threat to the system. However, there seems to be a paradox: Subordinates' deviance and (occasional) misbehaviour does not threaten organisational hierarchy but often re-establishes or even strengthens hierarchical order even though it challenges it. In itself, this phenomenon is quite self-evident. What is less clear is when exactly subordinates' deviance might contribute to the (further) stabilisation, continuation and persistence of the hierarchical social order and when it might be indeed system threatening. For interrogating the specific conditions and consequences of subordinates' deviance within organisational settings, the concept of crossing of boundaries will be introduced and differentiated into weak, medium and strong crossings. The concept will then be applied to subordinates' deviance in the realms of social action, interests, identity and norms and values.

Implementing automatic sorting operations in the parcel delivery industry can dramatically improve both capacity and service quality but demands radical and complex organizational change. The present in-depth grounded theory study examined a change process of this kind within one of the few global companies in the parcel delivery sector, focusing on three European hubs where automatic sorting had recently been introduced.

Grounded theory methodology, which facilitates the gradual emergence and dialogical interpretation of empirically grounded theoretical concepts, was particularly suited to the current project's open-ended research design and the hybrid (prescriptive but also constructive) nature of the change process under study. The investigation comprised iterative cycles of data collection, open coding, selective coding and theoretical coding over a three-year period.

In keeping with the dual nature of the change underway, a set of tensions were identified between pairs of opposite poles: manual vs automated, planned vs emergent and corporate vs site. The management of these tensions, which leveraged both prescriptive and sensemaking approaches, was found to trigger knowledge production, facilitating a gradual transition from high to low uncertainty and, consequently, progressive movement along the continuum between each pair of competing poles. Within this process, the industrial engineering function acted as an agent of change with a key orchestrating role.

As one of the first in-depth grounded theory analyses of tension management, this study contributes to the relatively recent debate on the recognition, analysis and handling of tensions and paradoxes in organizational change, suggesting innovative criteria for successful change management and identifying promising new avenues for research. From a managerial perspective, the study outcomes suggest that explicit recognition of uncertainty and tensions in organizational change can pave the way for solutions based on agility and continuous organizational learning.

Using dynamic capability theory, this study investigates how information technology (IT) support affects firms' online and offline cross-channel integration (CCI). In addition, it applies institutional theory to examine how the relationships between IT support and CCI are moderated by firms' institutional environments.

A sample of 308 firms in China that conduct business in online and offline channels was empirically tested through hierarchical regression analysis.

The results showed two types of IT support facilitated CCI: IT support for strategy and IT support for process. The relationship between IT support for process and CCI was stronger than that between IT support for strategy and CCI. The results further indicated institutional environment (i.e. dysfunctional competition and government support) played differing roles in these effects, such that the relationship between IT support for strategy and CCI was significantly weakened by dysfunctional competition yet enhanced by government support. However, neither dysfunctional competition nor government support had a significant moderating role in the relationship between IT support for process and CCI.

This study identifies different IT support types as antecedents of CCI. It is also one of the earliest attempts to explore the influence of institutional environment on the relationship between IT support and CCI.