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This article analyzes a European‐wide dissemination project which aimed at spreading quality management and software process improvement approaches among organizations in the IT sector and beyond to organizations which produce software as part of their primary product. The research presented investigates to what extent that mission has been accomplished and what lessons can be learned for similar actions in the future. For the analysis Rogers’ well‐known model of the diffusion of innovations is used. A secondary outcome of the study therefore is an appraisal of the suitability of the model to plan and perform large‐scale diffusion actions.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how music consumption communities remember their past. Specifically, the paper reports on the role of heritage in constructing the cultural memory of a consumption community and on the implications for its identity and membership.

Drawing upon insights from theories of cultural memory, heritage, and collective consumption, this interpretive inquiry makes use of interview, documentary, and artefactual analysis, as well as visual and observational data, to analyse an exhibition of the community’s popular music heritage entitled One Family – One Tribe: The Art & Artefacts of New Model Army.

The analysis shows how the community creates a sense of its own past and reflects this in memories, imagination, and the creative work of the band.

This is a single case study, but one whose exploratory character provides fruitful insights into the relationship between cultural memory, imagination, heritage, and consumption communities.

The paper shows how consumption communities can do the work of social remembering and re-imagining of their own past, thus strengthening their identity through time.

The study shows clearly how a consumption community can engage, through memory and imagination, with its own past, and indeed the past in general, and can draw upon material and other resources to heritagise its own particular sense of community and help to strengthen its identity and membership.

The paper offers a theoretical framework for the process by which music consumption communities construct their own past, and shows how theories of cultural memory and heritage can help to understand this important process. It also illustrates the importance of imagination, as well as memory, in this process.

The field of supply chain management (SCM) has historically been informed by knowledge from narrow functional areas. While some effort towards producing a broader organizational perspective has been made, nonetheless, SCM continues to be largely eclectic with little consensus on its conceptualization and research methodological bases. This paper seeks to clarify aspects of this emerging perspective.

A total of 100 randomly selected refereed journal articles were systematically analyzed.

A number of key findings emerged: the field is a relatively “new” one; several disciplines claim ownership of the field; consensus is lacking on the definition of the term; contextual focus is mostly on the manufacturing industry; predominantly “process” conceptual framing prevails; research methods employed are mostly analytical conceptual, empirical surveys or case studies; the positivist research paradigmatic stance is prevalent; and theories related to transaction cost economics and competitive advantage dominate.

This review identifies various conceptual and research methodological characteristics of SCM. From a philosophy of knowledge perspective, it is suggested that SCM be framed as a Lakatosian Research Program, for this has the best potential to assist in the development of SCM body of knowledge in a sustainable way into the future.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the current literature base of critical success factors (CSFs) of enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementations, provide a systematic compilation of CSFs, and present a new comprehensive taxonomy of CSFs for ERP system implementation.

This paper compiles literature that highlighted possible references to CSFs for ERP implementation projects. Given that the purpose of this paper is to achieve a depth of understanding of the various CSFs already identified by other researchers, “content analysis” is used. Four stages of content analysis are adopted to collect and analyse the literature, i.e. data collection, open coding, axial coding, and selective coding.

By analyzing all CFSs mentioned in literature during the last ten years (1999‐2008), taxonomy of ERP CSFs implementation was formulated. In total 17 CSFs were identified, which is then categorized into five main categories.

Literature is collected from selected databases and journals from 1999 to 2008.

This paper is significant because taxonomy helps us organize the knowledge. Taxonomy can help the researchers to make their search easier by assigning CSFs to a category and defining relationships between those categories.

The output of this paper will help future researchers to increase identification of related studies in the literature review phase of their work.

Presents over sixty abstracts summarising the 1999 Employment Research Unit annual conference held at the University of Cardiff. Explores the multiple impacts of globalization on work and employment in contemporary organizations. Covers the human resource management implications of organizational responses to globalization. Examines the theoretical, methodological, empirical and comparative issues pertaining to competitiveness and the management of human resources, the impact of organisational strategies and international production on the workplace, the organization of labour markets, human resource development, cultural change in organisations, trade union responses, and trans‐national corporations. Cites many case studies showing how globalization has brought a lot of opportunities together with much change both to the employee and the employer. Considers the threats to existing cultures, structures and systems.

The purpose of this paper is to determine the state-of-the-art in socially responsible sourcing (SRS) research, leading to an agenda for further work; and to evaluate the use of theory in this context. SRS is defined as the upstream social issues within the sustainability literature, where social issues include human rights, community development and ethical issues but exclude environmental concerns.

A systematic literature review of 157 papers that include SRS published in ABS listed journals. The papers have been analysed according to their research content, with a particular focus on the use of pre-existing theories.

Key findings for researchers and managers alike include an analytical discussion of strategies developed to date to embed SRS in an organisation; and key research gaps include a particular need to consider the supplier perspective in developing countries. In terms of the use of theory, a typology is proposed, which (in ascending order of effectiveness) is as follows: theory dressing, theory matching, theory suggesting/explaining and theory expansion.

The review is limited to papers published in the ABS list; and the analysis of the use of theory is limited to the SRS literature. The findings suggest that insightful papers can be written without any use of theory but that as a field develops, a greater depth of application of theory is needed to aid understanding.

This is the only review that focuses exclusively on social issues SRS, excluding environmental issues, thus allowing for a greater depth of discussion on social issues; and is unique in its detailed critical analysis of the use of theory.

The purpose of this paper is to answer the following question: What can researchers learn from consumer research that can inform them about the consequences of consumption?

This paper follows guidelines for a summarization conceptual model. First, the paper offers a review of consumption theories and research studies on a variety of consumption-related constructs. Then, a bird’s-eye view is taken to critically synthesize the findings.

The consequences of consumption can be summarized along a framework reflecting the positive and negative effects of consumption on oneself, one’s relationships, one’s society and the Earth. Knowledge gaps in previous research are identified, and a set of propositions is provided to enrich the understanding of the consequences of consumption.

The bird’s-eye view of the studies addressing the impacts of consumption identified gaps of knowledge in this area; these gaps constitute valuable topics for future researchers to study. The findings of the paper stress the need for studying the boundaries of different consumption effects. The review emphasizes the complex intermingling between consumer motives (antecedents) to behave in certain ways and the impacts (consequences) of such behaviors. The major limitation to this research stems from the immensity of the task involved.

This paper informs public policymakers on how to create realistic regulations that take into consideration the complexity of consumption. It calls on governments to provide an infrastructure that facilitates experiential consumption and to educate consumers, through the media and the public schools, to consume responsibly.

Whereas previous researchers have focused on a particular consumption practice while studying the consequences of consumption, this paper provides a comprehensive review that includes an array of practices. This paper synthesizes previous research findings through presenting a framework delineating the effects of consumption and identifying knowledge gaps in this research domain. The paper also provides a set of propositions that can guide future research on the topic.

Researchers are now increasingly able to identify and retrieve information without the need to move from their own PC, bypassing the library and its staff. The number of full text databases on‐line is also increasing, providing instant access to newspapers and newswires, popular magazines and scholarly journals, financial and directory sources, and reference books. These files appear on all the major time‐sharing systems, some of which are modifying their search software to attract this growing market. This paper explores the relationship between the end user and primary full text databases. It looks at full text databases generically, rather than at individual systems, databases, or searching techniques. It identifies roles that information professionals can play in maximizing the benefits of full text databases for end users.

The purpose of this paper is to advance thought and practice on supply chain relationship building, in the context of humanitarian logistics, drawing on lessons from leading practitioners.

The presentations were treated like data, enabling grounded research concerning practitioners. The presentations were recorded, transcribed, vetted, and imported into qualitative software (NVivo8) to facilitate further analysis, which led to testable propositions.

Three themes emerged, centered around relationship benefits, challenges, and advice on relationship building. Advice from the practitioners led to 11 propositions.

While the presentations were treated as interview data, there was no opportunity to probe statements made by the speakers. Also, speakers were the sole representatives for their organizations. Finally, the findings cannot be generalized beyond the types of situations and organizations represented at the conference.

The propositions represent advice from experienced humanitarian practitioners on building supply chain relationships.

Supply chains are economic entities. They are also social entities. Humanitarian supply chains involve people working together to help other people in need.

There are few published articles on supply chain relationship building, and only several pieces on humanitarian partnerships or relationships. This paper contributes to the literature in a novel way, by drawing on expert speakers at a humanitarian conference.

Without the adoption of a uniform agreed upon definition of supply chain management (SCM), researchers and practitioners will not be able to “advance the theory and practice” of the discipline. An integrated definition of SCM would greatly benefit researchers' efforts to study the phenomenon of SCM and those practitioners attempting to implement SCM. This paper aims to address these issues.

Using the qualitative analysis software NVivo, this study examines 166 definitions of SCM that have appeared in the literature to determine important components of an integrated definition of SCM.

Three broad themes of SCM are identified, including: activities; benefits; and constituents/components. An encompassing definition of SCM is developed from the qualitative analysis of these definitions.

While a large number of SCM definitions have been included in the research design, there may be additional definitions that are excluded given the very large number of SCM publications.

A consensus definition of SCM will allow researchers to more precisely develop theory and practitioners to identify the scope and boundaries of SCM.

This paper is the first attempt to include a large number of SCM definitions for the purpose of developing a consensus definition of the concept. Previous literature has included only a subset of published SCM definitions.