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The purpose of this paper was to explore individual- and firm-level antecedents of the ability of a manufacturing firm's personnel to collaborate and integrate knowledge for organizational resilience practices.

The authors apply hierarchical regression analysis to study a sample of 192 European industrial equipment manufacturers. Data for each firm are collected from surveys of two key informants in each firm, as well as from public sources.

Firms' personnel’s ability to integrate information and knowledge for organizational resilience practices was positively related with the extent of the head of manufacturing's network of personal contacts inside the firm. This effect was stronger in firms with more formalized job descriptions and clearly defined roles. The head of manufacturing's orientation to teamwork and cooperation impacted this ability only in firms that did not financially incentivize cooperation. The authors also found that cooperation incentives and role formalization directly relate to firms' personnel’s ability to integrate information and knowledge for organizational resilience practices.

The study proposes to study organizational resilience practices through a transactive memory systems lens. The study is also the first to link characteristics of individual managers to firm-level resilience practices by examining the antecedents of firms' ability to integrate information and knowledge to recover from operational disruptions. Furthermore, the study serves to enhance the knowledge of resilience practices by examining the role of firm-level antecedents and their interplay with characteristics of individual managers.

This paper aims to investigate the factors enabling or hindering the simultaneous pursuit of volume flexibility and mix flexibility within a supply chain through the lens of a manufacturing plant seeking to implement a build‐to‐order (BTO) strategy.

To accomplish this empirical investigation, an in‐depth case study involving a manufacturing plant and its supply chain was designed. Prior to primary and secondary data collection, this research setting had already decided to implement a BTO strategy and had, moreover, carefully assessed several practices for BTO strategy implementation, as well as their interactions.

The studied case suggests that a number of approaches typically used to increase volume flexibility, actually negatively affect mix flexibility and vice versa. The existence of such trade‐offs may ultimately inhibit the implementation of a BTO strategy and this was the case in the studied company. Nevertheless, empirical evidence also suggests that, to some extent, volume flexibility and mix flexibility may be achieved synergistically, as initiatives such as component standardization or component‐process interface standardization would improve both volume flexibility and mix flexibility.

The pursuit of volume flexibility and mix flexibility in implementing a BTO strategy in a specific setting and from primarily an operations management perspective was investigated. As such, the findings can be complemented by viewing the case study results through the lens of other established general management theories or by replicating the study in different research settings.

While past research informs us about how manufacturing firms can successfully achieve mix flexibility or volume flexibility, there are few insights for understanding how volume flexibility and mix flexibility can both be simultaneously achieved within a manufacturing plant and its supply chain. This research fills this gap in the literature and contributes to the development of a theory of BTO strategy implementation, especially in terms of volume flexibility, mix flexibility and their interactions.

The operational outcomes of form postponement (FP) have been increasingly investigated in the last two decades under the effects of escalating product variety and diffusion of mass customisation strategies. However, conflicting or hard‐to‐relate findings are quite frequent in the literature, so that a unifying framework for operations decision making is still lacking. The purpose of this paper is to develop a typological theory that reconciles into a coherent picture extant research on FP effects on operational performance.

The paper defines three mutually exclusive and exhaustive types of FP at the company level of analysis. Then, it revisits, through the lens of this typology, the literature on FP and formalizes how, why and under which assumptions each FP type affects operational performance.

The paper demonstrates that, to predict and explain FP effects on operational performance, three types of FP should be distinguished. In fact, it is shown that either these FP types have different effects on a given performance dimension, or they have the same effect but the logical justification for this effect is often different according to the FP type being considered.

The paper's synopsis of past research accomplishments indicates that future work will have to investigate the operational implications of a specific FP type almost ignored in the literature, as well as test the relationships hypothesized in the literature. Further opportunities for future research include extending the level of analysis beyond the boundaries of the company and linking the paper's FP typology to the operations strategy discourse.

The lack of understanding of the benefits and costs of FP has been found to be a major obstacle to FP implementation. The paper's typological theory supports managerial decision making by clarifying what FP alternatives companies have and what are the operational implications for each of these alternatives.

The paper's typological theory reconciles apparently conflicting findings in the literature by explaining such differences in terms of differences in the FP type being investigated. Additionally, the typology helps avoid a twofold risk: on the one hand, the risk of generalizing an effect or mechanism that only applies to a specific FP type and, on the other hand, the risk of failing to detect type‐specific effects or mechanisms.

A primary function of the Performance Measurement System is to provide employees with information on their past performance, allowing them to assess the outcomes of their actions, and therefore if they are meeting or not the objectives they are given. This work aims at contributing to the understanding of how the effectiveness of performance feedback information can be improved by defining a set of distinct performance feedback dimensions based on a PMS literature review, and by validating it empirically on an international sample of 164 manufacturing organisations. The proposed dimensions are: relevance as performance feedback orientation to the achievement of objectives; dynamic adjustment of performance feedback; relevance as usefulness of cost performance feedback; relevance as usefulness of non‐cost performance feedback; timeliness of shop‐floor performance feedback; personal performance feedback; and feedback on the overall process performances. The analysis shows that these dimensions are distinct, thus allowing to deal with them separately both in PMS design and audit. As far as the effectiveness of the performance feedback is concerned, it emerges that for several dimensions higher scores are associated to higher operating performances (cost, time and quality), but in one case this only holds for managers and in another one only for supervisors.

Many studies claim that when an organization interacts with suppliers and with customers across the supply chain, the organization would achieve improved time performances. This claim, however, has undergone limited theoretical development, as well as subsequent systematic empirical testing. As a result, we still have incomplete understanding of the “why” (i.e. the rationale) and the “how” (i.e. the mechanisms by which) of such interaction’s impact on time performances. This study addresses these issues through both model development and empirical analyses of 164 plants. Our analyses suggest two findings. First, when an organization interacts with suppliers and with customers on quality management issues, the organization would improve its time performances indirectly as a result of complete mediation by internal practices for: quality management; low management; inter‐unit coordination; and vertical coordination. On the other hand, when an organization interacts with suppliers and with customers on materials flow management issues, the impact on time‐related performances can either be completely or partially mediated by internal practices.

This study aims to examine publications of supply chain management (SCM) researchers from across the world and maps the leadership role of authors and institutions based on how prolific they are in publishing and on network measures of centrality while accounting for the quality of the outlets that they publish in. It aims to inform stakeholders on who the leading SCM scholars are, their primary areas of SCM research, their publication profiles and the nature of their networks. It also identifies and informs on the leading SCM research institutions of the world and where leadership in specific areas of SCM research is emerging from.

Based on SCM papers appearing in a set of seven leading journals over the 15-year period of 2001-2015, publication scores and social network analysis measures of total degree centrality and Bonacich power centrality are used to identify the highest ranked agents in SCM research overall, as well as in some specific areas of SCM research. Social network analysis is also used to examine the nature and scope of the networks of the ranked agents and where leadership in SCM research is emerging from.

Authors and institutions from the USA and UK are found to dominate much of the rankings in SCM research both by publication score and social network analysis measures of centrality. In examining the networks of the very top authors and institutions of the world, their networks are found to be more inward-looking (country-centric) than outward-looking (globally dispersed). Further, researchers in Europe and Asia alike are found to exhibit significant continental inclinations in their network formations with researchers in Europe displaying greater propensity to collaborate with their European-based counterparts and researchers in Asia with their Asian-based counterparts. Also, from among the journals, Supply Chain Management: An International Journal is found to exhibit a far more expansive global reach than any of the other journals.

The journal set used in this study, though representative of high-quality SCM research outlets, is not exhaustive of all potential outlets that publish SCM research. Further, the measure of quality that this study assigns to the various publications is based solely on a publication score that accounts for the quality of the journals, as rated by Association of Business Schools that the papers appear in and nothing else.

By informing the community of stakeholders of SCM research about the top-ranked SCM authors, institutions and countries of the world, the nature of their networks, as well as what the primary areas of SCM research of the leading authors in the world are, this research provides stakeholders, including managers, researchers and students, information that is helpful to them not only because of the insights it provides but also for the gauging of potential for embedding themselves in specific networks, engaging in collaborative research with the leading agents or pursuing educational opportunities with them.

This research is the first of its kind to identify and rank the top SCM authors and institutions from across the world using a representative set of seven leading SCM and primary OM journals based on publication scores and social network measures of centrality. The research is also the first of its kind to identify and rank the top authors and institutions within specific areas of SCM research and to identify future research opportunities relating to aspects of collaboration and networking in research endeavors.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on the science park (SP) “physical” location and the innovation cluster (IC) “virtual” location, and aims at investigating: the motivations driving firms to settle in these two agglomerations; the main problems firms, belonging to the two structures, face in their growth process; similarities and differences between a “physical” and a “virtual” location; which forms of proximity (geographical, relational, social, cognitive, organizational, and institutional) play a role within the SP and the IC.

A literature review on proximity is followed by an investigation of the Bioindustry Park and the IC BioPmed in Piedmont region in Italy, through a structured questionnaire, sent between February and March 2002, to firms co-located in the park and/or member of the cluster.

From the analysis did emerge that the physical location in the park and the virtual location in the cluster might be complements rather than substitutes.

Shortcomings like the limited number of companies interviewed, and the absence of a sample of companies exclusively co-located in the park, are observable. Additional research might corroborate the results, which are specifically valid for the two case studies.

The idea of understanding differences and similarities between the SP and the IC, and of investigating which proximity typologies play a role in a “physical” and in a “virtual” location, may be useful to design future policy strategies.

The originality of this paper is given by the analysis of a new phenomenon: physical and virtual agglomeration typologies, characterized by several forms of proximity enhancing knowledge diffusion.

The paper aims to address the question of how and how often companies change their manufacturing strategy in the medium and long run, thus addressing a lack of evidence in the literature.

This paper explores the movements made by companies among four manufacturing strategy configurations drawn from the literature (market‐based, product‐based, capability‐based and price‐based configuration). Analyses are based on three longitudinal samples from the International Manufacturing Strategy Survey (IMSS) database.

Results show that while strategic configurations are rather stable, many companies do indeed change strategy and identifies which patterns of change prevail. Product‐based strategy is the most‐widely spread and most stable strategy. Capability‐based competition is the rising star. The market‐based strategy is struggling and price‐based competition is on its way out.

The main limitation is the small size of longitudinal samples, leading to tentative propositions for further testing.

No strategic configuration appears to be the final “maturity” target for manufacturers. Companies select their configurations according to life cycle of the organization and market competition.

The paper contributes to fill a lack of longitudinal evidence of strategic change and flexibility of manufacturing companies.

Large terminologies usually contain a mix of terms that are either generic or domain specific, which makes the use of the terminology itself a difficult task that may limit the positive effects of these systems. The purpose of this paper is to systematically evaluate the degree of domain specificity of the AGROVOC controlled vocabulary terms as a representative of a large terminology in the agricultural domain and discuss the generic/specific boundaries across its hierarchy.

A user-oriented study with domain-experts in conjunction with quantitative and systematic analysis. First an in-depth analysis of AGROVOC was carried out to make a proper selection of terms for the experiment. Then domain-experts were asked to classify the terms according to their domain specificity. An evaluation was conducted to analyse the domain-experts’ results. Finally, the resulting data set was automatically compared with the terms in SUMO, an upper ontology and MILO, a mid-level ontology; to analyse the coincidences.

Results show the existence of a high number of generic terms. The motivation for several of the unclear cases is also depicted. The automatic evaluation showed that there is not a direct way to assess the specificity degree of a term by using SUMO and MILO ontologies, however, it provided additional validation of the results gathered from the domain-experts.

The “domain-analysis” concept has long been discussed and it could be addressed from different perspectives. A resume of these perspectives and an explanation of the approach followed in this experiment is included in the background section.

The authors propose an approach to identify the domain specificity of terms in large domain-specific terminologies and a criterion to measure the overall domain specificity of a knowledge organisation system, based on domain-experts analysis. The authors also provide a first insight about using automated measures to determine the degree to which a given term can be considered domain specific. The resulting data set from the domain-experts’ evaluation can be reused as a gold standard for further research about these automatic measures.