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The aim of this paper is threefold: first, to examine the content of supply chain quality management (SCQM); second, to identify the structure of SCQM; and third, to show ways for finding improvement opportunities and organizing individual institution's resources/actions into collective performance outcomes.

To meet the goals of this work, the paper uses abductive reasoning and two qualitative methods: content analysis and formal concept analysis (FCA). Primary data were collected from both original design manufacturers (ODMs) and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) in Taiwan.

According to the qualitative empirical study, modern enterprises need to pay immediate attention to the following two pathways: a compliance approach and a voluntary approach. For the former, three strategic content variables are identified: training programs, ISO, and supplier quality audit programs. As for initiating a voluntary effort, modern lead firms need to instill “motivation” into a supply chain quality system.

The findings based on the abductive model reveal numerous strategic and tactical enablers, key sequences to move firms from their current situation to their preferred one, and critical opportunities for supply chain‐wide quality system designs.

This study will be of great value to supply chain policy makers, supply chain operators, and decision makers in lead firms in a supply chain setting and their channel partners. The proactive use of the authors' proposed research procedure is indispensable to effective supply chain quality planning.

The paper seeks to present an analysis of the development of schools of librarianship and information science (LIS) in the European Union (EU) applicant states until 2004. It discusses the potential and actual changes in their organisation, notably their curriculum.

The comparative analysis of LIS programmes was performed. The model presented by T.D. Wilson in 2001 was selected as the model for analysing the data. The aim was to support the Wilson model with some empirical data from the specific countries.

The results show that the long history of traditional library education in these schools was not a great obstacle to adapting the curriculum to new professional and political standards. LIS schools have generally changed their curriculum towards those of modern LIS schools and have also embraced the EU outlines regarding higher education, especially the Bologna Declaration.

This study has its limitations as it is based only on the formal courses’ names and the formal content. Comparative analysis could also be accomplished through analysing courses' content, students and teaching staff.

The theoretical model of LIS courses analysis was tested on the LIS programmes in EU new member and applicant states. Testing the model shows its weaknesses and strengths. This could be developed in a simple but practical and useful tool for LIS programmes comparison and harmonisation, where necessary.

This study attempts to develop an approach with triangulation to explore the determinants of knowledge flows, as well as the relationships among them.

The proposed approach with the use of triangulation is designed to handle the issues that arise in the various interactions and numerous contexts among entities and/or activities that are associated with KM.

The proposed hybrid approach is found to be helpful in dealing with the issue of knowledge flow, especially involving various entities and complex interactions with numerous contents and dynamic contexts. In addition, the findings also show the presence of multi‐directional and adaptive interactions among determinants to knowledge flows, and also how these influence a firm's KM initiatives and performance.

The proposed hybrid approach can be considered as a way to overcome the limitations both of qualitative and quantitative methods, and the relationships among knowledge flows explored in this study provide some directions for future KM research.

The proposed approach focuses on the visualization of probable determinants to knowledge flows within an organization. This visualization can be utilized to evaluate the determinants and their relationships with each other, which may help managers to take actions to achieve more effective and efficient KM.

The results show the value of using a hybrid approach for dealing with research issues involving various entities and activities with complex content, such as knowledge flows.

The purpose of this study is to propose a framework depicting the dynamic links between a firm’s external environment, competitive strategy, manufacturing strategy, competitive advantage and firm performance. This is followed by articulating expected differences among the the content and process dimensions dimensions of a manufacturing strategy for different competitive strategies.

Today, manufacturing is widely recognized as one of the most important means of creating and sustaining a competitive advantage. This paper studies the emerging broader view of the strategic role of manufacturing by offering a manufacturing strategy model, showing its impact on competitive advantage and, ultimately, firm performance. This is accomplished by identifying and defining major content and process dimensions of manufacturing strategy and relating them to a firm’s strategic type. The paper uses an integrative competitive strategy typology (Segev, 1989) to clarify differences in manufacturing strategy dimensions and different competitive strategies. The concept of “fit as gestalt” among the dimensions of manufacturing strategy is also introduced. This study presents the implications of fit between manufacturing and competitive strategy and the contribution of content and process dimensions of manufacturing strategy to firm performance and concludes by providing implications for executives and future research issues.

Differences in content and process dimensions of manufacturing strategy for different competitive strategies are clarified.

Other researchers may propose different frameworks for linking manufacturing and competitive strategies.

This paper presents an integrative view of competitive and manufacturing strategies. It highlights the numerous choices companies must make to ensure fit among the competitive strategic types and their corresponding manufacturing strategies. This integration adds coherence and parsimony to the literature. It provides a basis for conceptualizing manufacturing strategy, thus reconciling different strategic perspectives and reducing a potential source of conflicting research results.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on the development of definitional standards for research information as a wicked problem. A central solution strategy for such problems, increasing transparency by argumentation visualisation, is being evaluated.

Qualitative formal content analysis is used in order to examine whether the process of definition standardisation in the project can be characterised as a wicked problem. Action Research is used to assess the effect of argumentation visualisation in the project.

The results of the content analysis confirm the interpretation of the standardisation process as a wicked problem. The implementation of argumentation visualisation shows to increase the meetings’ focus and effectiveness.

The relationship between information exchange, transparency and acceptance of the development result should be addressed in future empirical analyses. Visualisation solutions require further development in order to accommodate needs of the stakeholders.

Argumentation visualisation is of high value for finding a consensus for definitional standards and should be considered for managing and exchanging information.

Applying solution strategies from design research on wicked problems to large-scale standardisation efforts opens up new possibilities for not only handling such projects but also providing new avenues of research for both the design and research information communities.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate electronic health record (EHR) initiatives at the national/external level. Governments are investing large amounts of money in national EHR systems. These systems are socially and politically complex and a variety of stakeholders (e.g. at the individual, organisational or national level) have an interest in evaluating such systems from technical, economic or patient outcome perspectives. In cognisance of academic research in the area, this paper presents an approach which uses the perspective of one particular type of professional critic, the media, to identify issues and evaluate their impact at a national level.

The work is conducted using an established evaluation framework and formal content analysis of selected relevant articles from the quality press of three selected countries.

Different issues take prominence in centralised vs decentralised EHR approaches. In countries with a decentralised approach issues of standards and interoperability take the fore. Where there is a more centralised approach the media focus is more on project management, budgetary and financial aspects. In all coverage political and economic aspects are emphasised over technical or patient outcome issues.

The paper represents the application of the content‐context‐process framework. It contributes to the information systems evaluation literature at the national/external level.

This paper aims to present an in‐depth review on the latest state of empirical research in transaction cost economics (TCE), focusing on single‐industry studies. The intensely discussed subject of operationalization of transaction costs is critically assessed, and a concept of how to increase the quality of findings in empirical studies is presented.

The sample was obtained by a literature research and review in high‐class media and submitted to in‐depth quantitative and qualitative analysis such as content analysis.

The findings are in part unexpected and substantially contribute to research: applicability of TCE to a broad range of industries is found, the majority being large industries with important markets. Most studies support TCE statements, some suggesting theory extension by complementary aspects. Operationalization of transaction costs remains a field requiring further research.

First, this article is condensed and therefore limited to single‐industry studies within TCE, understanding “industry” as a specialized field of activity. The question of industry boundaries may be a base for future research. Second, the subject of operationalization of transaction costs still requires further research.

Decision makers can continue to use TCE for various applications such as strategic alliance, vertical integration, governance choice, make‐or‐buy or contract choice questions. A shortcoming in most articles reviewed is the presentation of the industry's characteristics. Authors need to consider them in order to increase the qualitative level of single‐industry studies.

This paper provides significant insight into the field of single‐industry TCE studies. As a result of penetrating research in high‐class media and in‐depth analysis, the paper provides highly structured and intensely examined statements on existing literature and related findings, which support TCE statements and will lead current disputes in the literature to a further stage.

This research was conducted to outline the capturing and analysis of composite texts. We contextualize this using selfies as image and textual data sourced from Instagram and analyzed using a three stage analysis approach from a genre perspective.

The capturing of composite texts is outlined for numerous services available to researchers to study social media contexts. The analysis applies a three-stage technique of (1) what is shown, (2) what is said, and (3) what is the central narrative to overcome interpretive limitations of privileging text over image or vice versa.

Based on their structural characteristics, seven genre types emerged from the coded sample set.

Issues arise in capturing this data as social media platforms change their access and usage policies and as capturing services alter their capabilities.

The paper outlines a novel approach to capturing and understanding the mimesis and diegesis of selfies as composite texts.

This paper aims to assess the links among these supply chain constructs by conducting a full-scale systematic review of all supply chain management (SCM) literature reviews published in ten leading logistics, SCM and operations management journals from 1989 to 2012. Collaboration and integration are as central to SCM as risk and performance management.

The authors apply content analysis to execute the systematic literature review on the sample of 103 articles, supplemented by contingency analysis. These approaches guarantee a replicable, rigorous and transparent research process and minimize researcher bias. The analytical categories required for the content analysis are defined along the constructs of collaboration/integration and risk/performance.

As can be expected, the review highlights the key role of the two constructs in SCM. In this light, the research claims to provide statistical evidence of a link between the constructs of collaboration/integration and risk/performance, most notably between collaboration and performance, information sharing and rewards sharing, as well as integration and supply chain performance.

The study assesses the link between the constructs of collaboration/integration and risk/performance through research embedded in literature reviews, pinpointing research gaps and potential future research directions in the field. Contributing to SCM theory building, a thorough review provides statistical proof of the link between collaboration/integration and risk/performance.

Although numerous literature reviews have been conducted in the past on the SCM constructs of collaboration/integration and risk/performance, no full review of literature reviews aiming to test a theoretical link in the here presented form has yet been undertaken to the authors’ knowledge.

Employee training and learning have transformed over the years. The movement from classroom training to the blended format represents the magnitude of this evolution. This has placed much attention on self-regulated learning. This study aimed to understand the individual and organizational mechanisms that sustain the formal learning process in organizations. It explored the goals the organizations and employees strive to achieve by investing in learning. Through this, the authors investigated how technology assistance makes learning more goal-oriented, despite the possibility of different goals for different stakeholders. They also examined how person-job fit can be achieved in employee training.

The study adopted a grounded theory-based inductive approach using a qualitative inquiry that used in-depth interviews of employees working in the Indian IT/ITES sector. This sector is knowledge-intensive and engages in constant skill development. A content analysis of the interview transcripts unraveled the most relevant themes from the participants' discussion.

Individual learners use dimensions of self-regulated learning to set and achieve goals such as better performance and career development. On the other hand, organizations use learning support mechanisms such as better access and flexibility to direct employee learning behavior to achieve organizational goals. Focusing on goal congruence leads to better achievement of results. Goal congruence also implies good person-organization fit.

This research established how aligning individual and organizational mechanisms can help achieve training goals that ultimately contribute to organizational performance. The study differentiated itself by investigating training goal setting and goal achievement at two levels – organizational and individual – using a qualitative approach. It also showed how goal congruence is vital in improving organizational performance and how technology-enabled training practices rely on self-regulated learning and help achieve goal congruence.