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The Nature of Business Policy Business policy — or general management — is concerned with the following six major functions:

This paper aims to present a simple and innovative fuzzy methodology-based lean performance measurement system (L-PMS) for an Indian automotive supply chain. The paper also enlightens the influence of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) on supply chains and the practical implications of the unprecedented disruptions on the performance measurement systems.

The L-PMS is divided into three phases. In the first phase, the key performance indicator (KPI) list, as deemed fit by the organization, is prepared using literature and suggestions from the case organization. The list contains 61 KPIs measuring 24 performance dimensions in seven functional areas of the supply chain. In the second phase, the KPI performance data (actual, best and worst) are collected using the enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. In the last phase, the leanness score of the case organization is calculated at four levels – KPI, dimension, functional area and overall organization.

The overall leanness score of the case organization is 60%. The case organization uses KPIs from all seven functional areas, but it needs to improve the number of KPIs in administration and supplier management functional areas. The case organization uses only quantitative KPIs. However, the performance dimensions at the middle level are adequate. The leanness level of the case organization in different areas is highly variable (ranges from 45% to 91%).

The major limitation of the study is that the case study is done at a single organization.

The managers at the different levels of the hierarchy can use the lean performance measurement score to leverage the better performing areas/dimensions/KPIs and improve poor performing areas/dimensions/KPIs. The lean performance measurement at functional area level can help leadership to give responsibility to different people for the improvement of leanness with respect to different dimensions/functional areas. The disruptive impact of COVID-19 should clearly be understood by the managers to make appropriate decisions based on the severity as measured at different levels.

According to the authors' best knowledge, this is the first lean performance measurement application at the four hierarchical levels (KPI, performance dimension, functional area and overall organization).

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether there is a set of management competencies that should be possessed by managers irrespective of their areas of functional specialization using quantitative methodology.

For the study, 31 individual competencies were analyzed. The study was confined to a fully integrated telecommunication service provider; 198 managerial employees participated in the survey.

The findings reveal broad level competencies that are important for managers working in one of the seven functional areas. The findings suggest the importance of competencies from value and skill clusters than knowledge cluster across all functional areas. Further, there was hardly any congruence with the perceptions on current expertise and current importance across all the functional areas.

While the findings of the study have a specific relevance to the managers in the telecommunication industry, they could have a rather broader relevance with implications for management development initiatives.

Although there is an enormous diversity in the scope of competency literature, a few empirical research studies have been conducted on management competency requirements for different functional areas. A limited number of competency studies have been conducted in Asia and in many cases those were confined to identify requisite competencies for managers from a specific functional area, such as human resources development. Hence empirical research studies are needed to fill this lacuna in literature. This paper fills some of the gaps

The purpose of this paper is to review and synthesize the extant logistics literature on internal functional alignment to: create an inventory of prior research on this issue; identify areas that require additional examination, and; highlight opportunities and approaches for further research.

The paper discuss and presents in tabular form: an overview of existing academic literature on internal alignment between logistics and peer functions inside the firm; methods used in existing literature; interfaces studied by method; under‐examined interfaces between logistics and peer functions; and internal alignment mechanisms studied/suggested.

Most of the research identified has focused on the alignment between logistics and the sales/marketing functions. Thus, studies that examine alignment with several functional areas in the firm that have strong operational interdependencies with logistics are limited. There is also a shortage of research that investigates and articulates mechanisms for improving alignment between logistics and peer functional areas. The majority of the studies identified use the survey‐based methodology with data collected from one (rather than several) functional areas across multiple firms. Such quantitative techniques, while providing greater breadth, are incapable of providing the depth required for this complex interdisciplinary topic.

Deficient interaction between logistics and peer functions has serious implications within and beyond the firm as research strongly suggests that internal alignment is an important antecedent to alignment between supply chain partners. There is plenty of opportunity to enrich existing research on logistics' alignment with peer functions by focusing on several largely unexplored interfaces, and by drawing upon different methodological approaches to examine this important but relatively under‐researched phenomenon.

Presents an agenda for future research on logistics' alignment with peer functions and proposes an exploratory conceptual model and testable propositions that connect key variables that influence logistics' alignment with peer functions.

Investigates performance relationships for interfunctional process integration and specific logistics interface capabilities. The results indicate that competitive advantage is more likely to emanate from interfunctional process integration than individual function (sub) optimization. Also identifies logistics’ unique role as a boundary‐spanning interface between marketing, production, and new product development, as a potential source of competitive advantage. In terms of overall business performance, logistics followed by new product development are shown to have the greatest impact on profitability and growth. Further, logistics interface capabilities of customer service and logistics quality have the greatest independent impacts on business performance. In total these results imply that logistics, new product development, and demand‐management capabilities may provide firms with that extra competitive edge which shows up in “bottom line” performance. States that the relatively neglected areas of logistics boundary spanning and production customer service also deserve attention.

Investigates performance relationships for interfunctional process integration and specific logistics interface capabilities. The results indicate that competitive advantage is more likely to emanate from interfunctional process integration rather than individual function (sub) optimization. Logistics’ unique role as a boundary spanning interface between marketing, production, and new product development, is also identified as a potential source of competitive advantage. In terms of overall business performance, logistics followed by new product development are shown to have the greatest impact on profitability and growth. Further, logistics interface capabilities of customer service and logistics quality have the greatest independent impacts on business performance. In total, these results imply that logistics, new product development, and demand‐management capabilities may provide firms with that extra competitive edge which shows up in “bottom‐line” performance. States that the relatively neglected areas of logistics boundary spanning and production customer service also deserve attention.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a method for diagramming a base camp or space for emergency workers and a staging area to be used during sorting, storing, loading, and unloading of relief goods in a humanitarian logistics base airport.

A method is developed based on a synthesis of the relevant literature and current practices of airports. This provides a means for estimating the area required for each facility and visualizes the layout of the base through an adjacency diagram and a bubble diagram. The method is applied to the Shizuoka Airport in Japan as a case study.

The proposed method can be used to determine the approximate size and layout of a humanitarian logistics base in an airport based on the affected population and the number of emergency workers.

Airport operation regulations and mathematical models from architectural planning need to be reflected further.

The method provides potential operational improvements for policies and standards for airport operations and enables government officials and humanitarian logistics organizations to identify concerns in facilitating and managing constraints in existing airports.

This study addresses the detailed phases in a diagramming for a humanitarian logistics base airport by integrating an architectural approach and airport disaster management. The results highlight the importance of managing the flexible use of space to improve effective humanitarian logistics.

To identify, classify, and propose a preliminary theory of the value conflicts and social choices that arise in enterprise system use.

Ethnographic case study of a medium‐sized manufacturing firm, using a participant‐observer approach.

Three areas of value conflict are identified between functional areas: conflicts over work priorities, conflicts over dependency on the commitments of others, and conflicts over evaluation fairness. When participants perceived that the value conflicts were accommodated in a balanced and legitimate way, they chose to use information resources within the enterprise system. When the conflicts were perceived as too great, participants chose to ignore the enterprise system, or develop their own competing information resources.

This paper reports on theory building from one intensive case study. It implies, however, that previous attempts to account for the difficulty of enterprise resource planning (ERP) use have not focused enough on the social relationships between the functional areas that are tightly integrated through enterprise systems.

The three value conflict questions (work priorities, dependency on commitments, and evaluation fairness) can be used to identify potential ERP problem areas, and to clarify the costs and benefits of different ERP choices for various functional areas.

For information systems researchers and practitioners, this paper offers another means for identifying value conflicts and social choices in computerization, hopefully bringing us closer to Rob Kling's dream that computerization choices be made in a more socially benign way.

This study aims to describe the development of hospitality research in terms of research methods and data sources used in the 2010s.

Content analyses of the research methods and data sources used in original hospitality research published in the 2010s in the Cornell Hospitality Quarterly (CQ), International Journal of Hospitality Management (IJHM), International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management (IJCHM), Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Research (JHTR) and International Hospitality Review (IHR) were conducted. It describes whether the time span, functional areas and geographic regions of data sources were related to the research methods and data sources.

Results from 2,759 original hospitality empirical articles showed that marketing research used various research methods and data sources. Most finance articles used archival data, while most human resources articles used survey designs with organizational data. In addition, only a small amount of research used data from Oceania, Africa and Latin America.

This study sheds some light on the development of hospitality research in terms of research method and data source usage. However, it only focused on five English-based journals from 2010–2019. Therefore, future studies may seek to understand the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on research methods and data source usage in hospitality research.

This is the first study to examine five hospitality journals' research methods and data sources used in the last decade. It sheds light on the development of hospitality research in the previous decade and identifies new hospitality research avenues.

To offer a realistic foundation for urban cultural construction planning, we want to investigate the distribution features of Shanghai's cultural functional elements and examine the distribution patterns in urban space.

In this research, we managed to gather POI geographic data, refined and categorized them to integrate eight categories of cultural functional elements, observed the density and agglomeration, distribution direction and hot and cold spots of overall and each type of cultural functional elements using geospatial analysis methods and then investigated the factors influencing cultural functional elements using geographic detectors.

Our research shows apparent differences between regions and most cultural functional elements are found in the inner city. Second, there are hot and cold spots in the way different cultural functional elements are spread out. Its geographic structure is primarily influenced by third-party traffic service capacity and available time.

This work provides a benchmark for cultural planning in Shanghai by establishing the spatial aggregation impact of cultural functional elements.