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This article aims to analyze the strategic work of Polish entrepreneurs in the furniture industry following the political changes in 1989. The authors examined how these entrepreneurs transitioned from local craftsmen or importers into leaders of international manufacturing companies and how their strategizing contributed to the unprecedented growth of the Polish furniture sector.

The authors examined extant data, specifically biographical interviews conducted with 11 prominent leaders in the Polish furniture industry (Hryniewicki, 2015, 2018). They analyzed within a theoretical framework that integrates J.C. Spender’s theory of strategic management with Barry Johnson’s concept of polarity management. Polarity is a way of understanding and managing interdependent, opposing pairs of values or perspectives that give rise to conflict.

The analysis reveals key patterns of strategic challenges at the level of human agency, history and sense-making. The authors identified four key polarities: life and business, knowledge presence and absence, concordance and discordance, and instrumental and non-instrumental sense-making.

The polarity concept illuminates the interplay of agency and determinism in strategic decision-making, offering valuable insights for methodology and a deeper understanding of Poland’s furniture industry.

After completion of the case study, students will be able to analyze the marketing mix strategy of a firm, discuss the importance of a generic strategy to gain a competitive advantage, analyze the basis of consumer segmentation in furniture and highlight the importance of positioning in influencing the overall marketing mix strategy of a firm.

It was April 18, 2022. Puneet Singh Seehra (Seehra), the owner and director of Shearling Skins Private Limited (Shearling), was visibly worried as he was looking at the recent sales report. Shearling was in the business of manufacturing premium-quality furniture for corporate clients. Seehra was happy about the growth of his company. However, he was lately concerned about the declining sales figures. Some important questions were troubling Seehra. Was competition eating into his business? How could he differentiate Shearling from competition? What was the right marketing strategy for a market dominated by unorganized competitors and a few major players? His head spinning, he leaned back on his chair as he looked out of his office window.

The case study can be taught in a graduate-level course in marketing or strategy.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS: 8 Marketing

The objective of this study is to investigate the barriers hindering the integration of lean manufacturing (LM) practices within the furniture industry of Bangladesh. The traditional operational paradigms in this sector have posed substantial challenges to the effective implementation of LM. In this study, the barriers of implementing LM in the furniture business are examined, aiming to provide a systematic understanding of the barriers that must be addressed for a successful transition.

The research reveals that “Fragmented Industry Structure,” “Resistance to Lean Practices” and “Inadequate Plant Layout and Maintenance”, emerged as the foremost barriers to LM implementation in the furniture industry. Additionally, “Insufficient Expert Management,” “Limited Technical Resources” and “Lack of Capital Investment” play significant roles.

The outcomes of this study provide valuable insights into the furniture industry, enabling the development of strategies for effective LM implementation. One notable challenge in lean implementation is the tendency to revert to established practices when confronted with barriers. Therefore, this transition necessitates informed guidance and leadership. In addition to addressing these internal challenges, the scope of lean implementation should be broadened.

This study represents one of the initial efforts to systematically identify and assess the barriers to LM implementation within the furniture industry of Bangladesh, contributing to the emerging body of knowledge in this area.

Quality 4.0 represents the integration of quality management principles with digital technologies to drive continuous improvement and innovation in organizations. The purpose of this paper is to explore the essential organizational variables (OVs) for the successful implementation of Quality 4.0 in the Indian furniture industry.

Through a broad literature review, data from the Indian furniture industry and experts’ judgments a list of nineteen OVs have been recognized and classified into four major categories of digitalization, design, continuous improvement and employee training and up-skilling. The analytic hierarchy process (AHP) has been used to give comparative importance and prioritize the identified nineteen OVs of Quality 4.0 in the context of the Indian furniture industry.

The results of this study reveal that the identified variables are very important for successful Quality 4.0 implementation and have been supported by empirical evidence from the Indian furniture industry. The variable “automation” under the digitalization-related category is a significant variable having a maximum weightage of 26.8% followed by Cloud computing (DI4) having a global weight of 12.8%.

In addition to offering valuable insights and practical recommendations, the study recognizes a few limitations, such as industry-specific and the limited sample size. To diminish these limitations, future research should believe in conducting similar studies in different industries and extend the scope of the study.

Quality 4.0 is a term that refers to the integration of advanced digital technologies and smart data analytics into quality management systems to implement it considering OVs.

Smart furniture is an essential part of research that has been designed to best complement easy and safe human interaction. The purpose of smart furniture is to save the space of the house and make the products unique, awesome and safe, functional, strong and also make it works better so the people can live better with it. This research aims to explore the key supply chain strategies implemented by the Indian smart furniture industry to reduce the impact of a post-COVID-19 pandemic.

This work utilized a case study and conducted semi-structured interviews with the top leadership of the smart furniture manufacturing industry to explore key supply chain strategies to reduce the influence of the post-COVID-19 pandemic. Additionally, key supply chain strategies have been analyzed using a multi-criteria decision-making technique known as grey relational analysis (GRA) to determine their ranking significance in the smart furniture industry.

The results of this study discovered that “Inventory-Categorization” is essential in ensuring business continuity during the COVID-19 pandemic and helps reduce the amount of stock they have on hand. It enhanced the opportunity for employees to properly focus on their work and an opportunity for better work-life balance. The results of the study can also help supply chain stakeholders in their establishment of critical strategies.

The implications of this research work help the Indian furniture industry to make supply chain investment decisions that benefit the organization to sustain itself.

This is the first study to explore key supply chain strategies for the post-COVID-19 era. This work will assist managers and practitioners in helping the organization decide which supply chain strategies are more critical to the betterment of the organization.

Advancements in responsive manufacturing have been supporting companies over the last few decades. However, manufacturers now operate in a context of continuous uncertainty. This research paper explores a mechanism where companies can “elastically” provision and deprovision their production capacity, to enable them in coping with repeated disruptions. Such a mechanism is facilitated by the imitability and substitutability of production resources.

An inductive study was conducted using Gioia methodology for this theory generation research. Respondents from 20 UK manufacturing companies across multiple industrial sectors reflected on their experience during COVID-19. Resource-based view and resource dependence theory were employed to analyse the manufacturers' use of internal and external production resources.

The study identifies elastic responses at four operational levels: production-line, factory, company and supply chain. Elastic responses that imposed variable-costs were particularly well-suited for coping with unforeseen disruptions. Further, the imitability and substitutability of manufacturers helped others produce alternate goods during the crisis.

While uniqueness of production capability helps manufacturers sustain competitive advantage against competitors during stable operations, imitability and substitutability are beneficial during a crisis. Successful manufacturing companies need to combine these two approaches to respond effectively to repeated disruptions in a context of ongoing uncertainties. The theoretical contribution is in characterising responsive manufacturing in terms of resource heterogeneity and resource homogeneity, with elastic resourcing as the underlying mechanism.

This study aims to develop a benchmarking model with productivity, management, and sustainability indicators (PMS), measure the performance of furniture firms in Vietnam, explore the causes of performance gaps, and identify the barriers and factors of benchmarking practice.

The article uses both qualitative and quantitative methods. Literature review, exploratory interviews and a grounded-theory process are employed to develop a benchmarking framework and identify performance gaps, barriers and factors of benchmarking practice. The PMS benchmarking model and quantitative analysis are utilized to assess performance indicators.

The study proposes the PMS benchmarking model and measures performance indicators of furniture firms. The sources of performance gaps are explored as design, material supply, the economy of scale, market, management systems and openness. Benchmarking practice encounters barriers of difficult indicators, unsuitable firms, insufficient benchmarking knowledge, reluctance to share data, unavailable and unreliable data, and weak engagement. Benchmarking practice is determined by core factors: leader; internal factors: systems, engagement, strategy, scope, culture; external factors: customers, suppliers, associations, support, competition.

Firms could learn benchmarking indicators and the causes of these gaps to improve their performance. When implementing a benchmarking study, scholars and practitioners need to pay attention to barriers and factors of the benchmarking practice to ensure effective results.

This study develops the PMS benchmarking model and estimates performance indicators in an emerging country with the performance gap justification. It provides readers with benchmarking barriers with solutions and success factors of benchmarking practice.

This study investigates the impact of entrepreneurial orientation (EO) and knowledge management (KM) on firm performance (PERF), as well as the mediating role of KM in the EO–PERF (EO-PERF relationship). In particular, this study aims to explain the impact of KM on the relationship between the EO dimensions and PERF; dimensions are risk-taking (RT), innovativeness (IN) and proactiveness (PR).

This study uses structural equation modelling and fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) methodologies to explore target relationships. The sample consists of 150 small furniture manufacturers operating in Poland (out of 1,480 in the population).

The study findings show that KM partially mediates the IN–PERF relationship. Furthermore, fsQCA reveals that KM accompanied by IN is a core condition that leads to PERF. Moreover, the absence of KM (accompanied by the absence of RT and IN) leads to the absence of PERF. In addition, the results show that all the variables examined (RT, IN, PR and KM) positively impact PERF.

This study explores the role of KM in the context of EO and its impact on PERF in the low-tech industry. The study uses simultaneously two methodologies that represent different approaches in the search for the expected relationships. The findings reveal that KM mediates the EO-PERF relationship.

This study aims to determine how much company participation in a type of cluster affects its economic performance.

This study includes companies operating in seven industries (automotive, engineering, textiles, information technology (IT) services, furniture, packaging and nanotechnology) in the Czech Republic. The companies are divided into three groups: members of institutionalized cluster, operating in the same region (natural clusters) and operating in other regions. Data envelopment window analysis is used to measure their performance for 2009–2019.

Results show that the effect of clustering differs among industries. Companies in three industries (automotive, engineering, nanotechnology) reveal a positive impact of the cluster initiative on performance growth. Two industries (textile, packaging) with companies operating in a natural cluster show better performance than those in an institutionalized cluster. Moreover, the IT services and the furniture industries show no positive effect of clustering on corporate performance.

This research includes 686 companies from seven industries and monitored for 11 years. On the one hand, the sample includes a relatively high number of companies overall; but on the other hand, the sample is relatively small, especially for nonclustered companies. The reason is the lack of available financial statements for small companies.

From the perspective of practical cluster policy, the authors can recommend that monitoring the performance of member companies in clusters must be one of the criteria for evaluating the success of a cluster, such as cluster initiatives.

This study distinguishes between long-standing natural clusters in a given industry and institutionalized ones that have emerged because of a top-down initiative. An original database is created for clustered and nonclustered companies in seven industries, covering the entire Czech Republic.

The purpose of this study is to introduce an enterprise's productivity management named “Production efficiency improvement - PEFF”. This study shows the way of developing the management system to keep their shop floor “flexible to change” and “continuously controlling and improving” from the different levels and in various factories.

This study refers to Toyota's PEFF management system in the context of productivity enhancement through detailed management processes including yearly management, monthly management, daily management and its application in a case study from another sector as a model case of PEFF expansion. The methodology of this study is to introduce a method for production efficiency analysis, measure and select standard time through PEFF calculation.

Toyota's PEFF management can be extremely effective at developing management's ability to conduct day-to-day shop-floor management, know-how sharing and how Toyota applies PEFF to develop the world-standard on manpower efficiency for their factories. Besides, this study shows the applicable of PEFF improvement has successfully conducted in other manufacturers in a flexible way to achieve the improvement targets.

The results of this study will aid the managers in production lines to find the method of calculating and evaluating production efficiency through Toyota's management techniques such as PEFF, YIP, WVACT and standard time. However, the approach for this paper was from a synchronized system as Toyota is limited to generalized to small and medium-sized enterprises.

This paper is introducing the original Toyota's management technique to sustainable enhance their manpower performance and efficiency and answer the question of why TPS still exists in the age of digital management. PEFF management serves as an example of a value management process to help manufacturers to set guidelines to improve their productivity.