Search results

In the last four years, since Volume I of this Bibliography first appeared, there has been an explosion of literature in all the main functional areas of business. This wealth of material poses problems for the researcher in management studies — and, of course, for the librarian: uncovering what has been written in any one area is not an easy task. This volume aims to help the librarian and the researcher overcome some of the immediate problems of identification of material. It is an annotated bibliography of management, drawing on the wide variety of literature produced by MCB University Press. Over the last four years, MCB University Press has produced an extensive range of books and serial publications covering most of the established and many of the developing areas of management. This volume, in conjunction with Volume I, provides a guide to all the material published so far.

The food processing industry, confronted with increased global competition and more stringent customer demands, is pressurized to improve the pace and quality of its innovation processes. This paper aims to find out what factors constitute the main drivers and barriers to innovation and to explore how far the food processing industry can rely on the principles of innovation management developed in high‐tech industries to improve its innovation performance.

The study is based on the investigation of nine multinational food processing companies with their headquarters and/or major operations in The Netherlands. For this study a research questionnaire was developed, based on theoretical insights derived from the industrial organization theory and the resource‐based view. In each company the research director, CTO, or CEO completed the questionnaire and was interviewed about different aspects of innovation management.

The food processing industry can indeed rely on the principles of innovation management. However, there is clear room for improvement. Especially the potential of “open innovation” with suppliers and buyers to leverage innovation resources and capabilities is underutilized. Interestingly, the uneven power distribution in the chain, especially the high pressure of buyers, acts as a strong driver for innovation. Seen in this light it is noteworthy that in most companies the communication from R&D to marketing needs further improvement to enhance customer orientation, one of the main drivers of innovation success.

This study is the first to investigate innovation management concepts related to success in the food processing industry.

The aim of this paper is to establish the differences between the food and beverages (F&B) and technology-based industries with regards to the relation between previously identified success factors and innovation project performance.

These differences are established on the basis of logistic regression analysis, using 38 innovation projects (18 F&B and 20 technology-based).

Newness of the innovation project to the company, communication capabilities and market potential have a more negative impact on innovation project performance in the F&B than the tech-based industry. Especially functional upstream capabilities increase the likelihood of success in F&B, when compared to tech-based innovation projects.

While functional upstream capabilities are important for success of F&B innovation projects, there is still room for improvement in order to deal effectively with newness of the innovation project to the company. Internalization of resources from the network and a balanced radical/incremental innovation project portfolio contribute to additional enhancement of functional capabilities of the F&B companies, improving their capacity to deal with newness. Through a larger focus on co-innovation with retail, F&B companies can improve their intra- and inter-firm communication capabilities to attain more consumer-oriented integration of R&D and marketing activities, improving the market potential of their innovations.

This paper demonstrates that the previously identified critical success factors for innovation projects differ in impact and importance for F&B innovation project performance when compared to innovation projects in the technology-based industry.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an integrated framework of complex relations among innovation characteristics, organizational capabilities, innovation potential and innovation performance.

The model is tested using partial least squares (PLS) modeling and 22 high- (96 respondents) and 16 (93 respondents) low-performing innovation projects from nine companies from the European industry.

The results show that the level of innovativeness of the project is an important determinant of product potential, whereas the complexity entailed in innovativeness entices integrative communication among innovation project team members. As expected, projects which are new to the company are related negatively to adequateness of the existing functional capabilities of the firm. The negative effects can be mitigated through integrative communication capabilities. Management can foster communication and knowledge integration through adequate databases and communication structures as well as social relations. Also, higher project potential and successful project performance can be attained through focus on product superiority and quality but also on speed of product introduction into the market.

An integrated framework which includes innovation characteristics, organizational capabilities which bring together project execution proficiency and synergy of firm capabilities with the innovation project, as well as innovation potential and performance is absent in the existing literature. The absence of an integrated framework may be the reason why still a large number of innovation projects result in failure. The emphasis on management of complexities in innovation in the paper requires the focus on the under-explored effect of innovativeness and newness of innovation projects on the functional and integrative communication capabilities of firms. While studies which focus on the synergy between firm capabilities and the innovation project regard mainly the functional capabilities, the inclusion of also the integrative communication capabilities allows the present paper to integrate the synergy view with the view that proficiency of project execution is decisive for innovation project performance (Harmancioglu et al., 2009).

This his paper focuses on a specific aspect of Value‐Based Management (VBM), the design of performance measurement systems. This remains an important challenge not only in Management Accounting but also in Human Resources Management. Performance measurement on various levels of organisation should be aligned to value creation, and management compensation should be tied to the achievement of targets set to these measures according to VBM proponents. In the present article definitions of concepts and issues associated with the design of performance measurement systems are discussed. Furthermore, the paper presents a review of four tools available to measure and manage intangible resources: human resource accounting, economic value‐added (EVA), balanced scorecard (BSC) and intellectual capital (IC). The role of non‐financial measures is also analysed from a VBM framework. Finally, some concluding remarks are highlighted in the last section.

Aims to formalize the benchmarking process by proposing methods and tools for the steps of the process. Focuses on the first two phases of the benchmarking process: measurement and self analysis (phase 1), and determination of subject and partners of a benchmarking study (phase 2). For this purpose, related to the first phase, a method of diagnosis is employed. In the second phase, three different data analysis methods (lexical analysis, principal components analysis and common factor analysis) are utilized. These two phases serve the purpose of an internal benchmarking (comparison between different domains of activities in the enterprise) and of an external benchmarking study (comparison between different enterprises). Three enterprises are selected for the benchmarking application. Related data are collected and analyzed, and results are reported.

Research has shown that a key issue for prisoners using healthcare services during their sentence is that of patient confidentiality. Maintaining prisoners’ medical confidentiality has been shown to be difficult in the prison setting as many treatments, especially those considered to be out of the ordinary, are more likely to result in a breach of medical confidence. This can include treating infectious diseases, such as HIV/AIDS, Hepatitis or tuberculosis, which can often include long term and regular contact with healthcare staff, and which, in some cases, may require referrals to specialists outside the prison setting. In addition, institutional factors unique to prisons may impact on healthcare staffs’ ability to maintain prisoners’ confidentiality, such as security or health and safety concerns. Drawing on research carried out by the author on healthcare and people with problematic drug use in prisons in a range of European countries, this paper considers the factors that impact on maintaining prisoners’ medical confidentiality and some of the attempts to address this issue.

The purpose of this paper is to extend the knowledge into the relationship between open innovation (OI) and firm’s innovative performance. Specifically, the authors aim to determine whether the benefits of OI practices are different for Food and Beverage (FnB) firms as compared to those of other sectors. The FnB industry is relevant in terms of employment GDP generation in the UE, characterised by high integration and low-tech intensity.

In order to achieve the goal and obtain robust results, the authors consider four OI dimensions and four innovation performance measures using panel data (2004-2011) from 10,771 FnB and non-FnB firms using Tobit and Logit models by random effects.

The authors test and confirm the presence of the classical inverted U-shape relationship between OI and firm innovative performance for FnB and non-FnB companies. However, the optimal number of external sources of knowledge used is lesser for FnB than the rest of the companies.

The paper compares the OI effects in a traditional and low-tech industry vs other industries considering four innovation outputs (product innovations, process innovations, incremental innovation and radical innovation).

Spare parts have become ubiquitous in modern societies and managing their requirements is an important and challenging task with tremendous cost implications for the organisations that are holding relevant inventories. An important operational issue involved in the management of spare parts is that of categorising the relevant stock keeping units (SKUs) in order to facilitate decision‐making with respect to forecasting and stock control and to enable managers to focus their attention on the most “important” SKUs. This issue has been overlooked in the academic literature although it constitutes a significant opportunity for increasing spare parts availability and/or reducing inventory costs. Moreover, and despite the huge literature developed since the 1970s on issues related to stock control for spare parts, very few studies actually consider empirical solution implementation and with few exceptions, case studies are lacking. Such a case study is described in this paper, the purpose of which is to offer insight into relevant business practices.

The issue of demand categorisation (including forecasting and stock control) for spare parts management is addressed and details reported of a project undertaken by an international business machine manufacturer for the purpose of improving its European spare parts logistics operations. The paper describes the actual intervention within the organisation in question, as well as the empirical benefits and the lessons learned from such a project.

This paper demonstrates the considerable scope that exists for improving relevant real word practices. It shows that simple well‐informed solutions result in substantial organisational savings.

This paper provides insight into the empirical utilisation of demand categorisation theory for forecasting and stock control and provides some very much needed empirical evidence on pertinent issues. In that respect, it should be of interest to both academics and practitioners.

Over the last years, food safety, health, environmental and societal issues are a few among many other reasons that force people to adopt new differentiated food products. This interesting shift of the consumption pattern from conventional food products to new differentiated products that incorporate innovative features, consist the main reasoning of the present study. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the drivers that influence the adoption of those differentiated food products and shed new light on consumer's behavior, by modeling and understanding better their attitude.

A two‐step cluster analysis was employed to explore the different levels of differentiated products adoption and a categorical regression model was estimated to explain this variation. Data were collected through a survey addressing 500 consumers, carried out in 2009 in a typical Greek urban area.

From the three different food product categories (organic, functional and genetically modified) four consumers' profiles were identified which were found to differ in terms of several socioeconomic characteristics. The increased level of disposable income, along with exposure to innovative food products, may well explain such a differential food product adoption.

Due to the small sample, the indefinable number of food products adopters (population) and to specific characteristics of the study area consumers, the results might face generalisability deficiencies.

From a practical point of view, to identify the reasons driving consumers to adopt or not new differentiated products with novelties is important generally for society, policy makers, food‐producing companies and related economic sectors.

The contribution of this research is in having examined, the adoption drivers of differentiated food product categories, for which there has been longstanding interest. The food product categories are examined comparatively as a group (organic, functional and genetically modified) and not individually.