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The purpose of this paper is to analyse the types and the nature of innovations developed by small companies in a traditional service sector, as well as the ways that innovations impact their strategic capabilities.

The paper provides evidence from three case studies captured through a number of interviews with senior managers within the companies. The paper adopted a comparative analysis, selecting two cases that have managed this process with great success and one showing evidently less success.

Organisational and process innovations are critical aspects of a dynamic strategy in small service companies. Although a successful innovation strategy does not require the development of technological systems and knowledge intensive services, it does necessitate their sophisticated usage. Innovation enables the firms to access new markets and the reconfiguration of strategic capabilities in the long term.

The paper identifies the existence of strong linkages between organisational and process innovation and dynamic capabilities in the small companies in a traditional service sector. The research has used qualitative methods and a case study methodology. Further research (e.g. other service industries) and ideally statistical evidence are required to generalise these findings into the wider service sector.

This work calls for managers in small companies in a traditional service sector which wish to grow to pay more attention to their active involvement in organisational and process innovations and the sophisticated usage (or development) of knowledge intensive services.

The paper brings together a number of concepts from the innovation studies and the strategic management literature to investigate management practices and strategies of small companies in a traditional service sector, the tramp shipping sector.

This study aims to bridge the gap left by earlier studies regarding the issue of whether the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) certification is a stepping stone that ultimately leads to instilling a total quality management (TQM) culture, or whether it is the end-point in their journey toward quality.

The study was primarily quantitative in nature supported from a qualitative survey following the triangulation approach, as the aim was to test a number of hypotheses related to TQM’s role in the operation of Greek ISO certified small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). A questionnaire was developed based on the critical success factors that were used in the self-assessment instrument developed by Hunt (1992) and Sashkin (1996) to assess the level of TQM implementation in approximately 400 Greek SMEs.

The study revealed that Greek ISO certified SMEs, emphasize performance appraisal, invest in quality elements that require minimum usage of their resources and prioritize their ISO certification.

TQM is one of the most powerful concepts available to businesses today. However, most of the literature focuses on the practice of TQM within large manufacturing organizations. This paper aims to readdress the situation by outlining a study on TQM in the SME sector in Greece.

Despite all the studies carried out in order to analyze the impact of quality management systems implementation and certification over companies' financial performance, conclusions reached so far have been of a contradictory nature. Some authors conclude that there is a positive relationship between ISO 9001 certification and companies' financial improvement, while others do not find evidence to support such a relationship. Overall, no consistent evidence could therefore be found in the literature concerning the ISO 9001 impact over companies' business financial performance. This work aims to provide a contribution in this area.

Using a public database of Portuguese companies' financial information, this paper describes the results obtained from studying the economic impact of quality management systems, based on a statistical analysis.

The results suggest that companies with higher financial performance do present a greater propensity to implement and certify their quality management systems. The ISO 9000 implementation motivation is a critical success factor in the impact of the quality management system over the company economic performance and, for some financial indicators, non‐certified companies do present, on average, higher performance than those that are certified.

This paper aims to provide an important contribution to the worldwide research related to the quality management systems impact over companies' financial performance.

Load forecasting is important to any electrical grid, but for the developing and third-world countries with power shortages, load forecasting is essential. When planed load shedding programs are implemented to face power shortage, a noticeable distortion to the load curves will happen, and this will make the load forecasting more difficult.

In this paper, a new load forecasting model is developed that can detect the effect of planned load shedding on the power consumption and estimate the load curve behavior without the shedding and with different shedding programs. A neuro-Fuzzy technique is used for the model, which is trained and tested with real data taken from one of the 11 KV feeders in Najaf city in Iraq to forecast the load for two days ahead for the four seasons. Load, temperature, time of the day and load shedding schedule for one month before are the input parameters for the training, and the load forecasting data for two days are estimated by the model.

To verify the model, the load is forecasted without shedding by the proposed model and compared to real data without shedding and the difference is acceptable.

The proposed model provides acceptable forecasting with the load shedding effect available and better than other models. The proposed model provides expected behavior of load with different shedding programs an issue helps to select the appropriate shedding program. The proposed model is useful to estimate the real demands by assuming load shedding hours to be zero and forecast the load. This is important in places suffer from grid problems and cannot supply full loads to calculate the peak demands as the case in Iraq.

The majority of ISO 9001 certification research studies conducted so far are supported by survey methodologies and descriptive statistics. As such, they express conclusions that are mainly derived from opinions and perceptions about the subject. Thus, it is common to find in the open literature references that point out the highly subjective results derived from such studies (often of somewhat contradictory nature). This paper tries to compile the main conclusions that ISO 9001 research studies have tried to address, with the aim of describing the quality management systems literature state‐of‐the‐art.

In order to achieve this objective, an exhaustive literature review of ISO 9000 studies was carried out. For that purpose approximately 100 articles were analysed, which were sorted in the following categories, according to the used methodology: surveys; analysis of financial indicators; case studies; interviews; literature review; and statistical data analysis.

This paper reflects an exhaustive literature review, which allowed the identification of a group of issues that ISO 9001 research studies have tried to address, as well as the most commonly used methodologies employed and main conclusions reached so far by the different authors. Then using such a state‐of‐the‐art as a starting point, it pointed out a number of questions that seem to be relevant but have not been so far addressed in the open literature in terms of providing clear and precise answers, as well as others that are at the core of the authors' future work in this area.

The value of the paper is to point out and to compile the main conclusions reached by the different authors and researchers in the most important ISO 9001 issues addressed in the open literature.

Despite all the studies carried out in order to analyze the impact of quality management systems' implementation and certification on companies' financial performance, conclusions reached so far have a contradictory nature. Some authors conclude that there is a positive relationship between ISO 9001 certification and companies' financial improvement, while others do not find evidence to support such a relationship. The purpose of this paper is to present the main results derived from a research project developed in order to analyze the economical impact of quality management system implementation and certification on companies' performance.

This paper describes the results obtained from studying the economic impact of quality management systems, based on the adoption of a case study methodology. The authors' goal was to reconstruct the companies' financial history with the aim of identifying the benefits and costs directly related to their quality management systems. The analyzed time period ranged from the year when the company decided to implement its quality management system up to the present.

Results show that it is not unanimous that certified companies would be less profitable if they had not implemented their quality management systems.

This paper tries to be an important contribution to the worldwide research related to the quality management systems' impact on companies' financial performance.

The purpose of this paper is to stimulate, shape and extend current discourse on the relevance of dynamic capabilities on firm competitiveness.

The authors delineate current debates on dynamic capabilities and synthesize them to develop some propositions and a heuristic framework to guide future research on dynamic capabilities as a strategic management construct.

The theoretical and methodological complexities involved in mapping the routines and processes’ underpinning dynamic capabilities has led to conceptual discrepancies, which in turn impede the understanding of the relevance and contribution of dynamic capabilities to competitiveness. Measuring dynamic capabilities remains the biggest barrier to progress in developing directions for theory and research in this area.

Stimulating and shaping the current discourse on the relevance of dynamic capabilities on competitiveness, the proposed integrated framework as a heuristic device can be to gauge the a firm’s dynamic capabilities vis-à-vis their competitors.

The authors propose a framework built around the inter-relationships of capabilities and hierarchies of capabilities to extend the understanding of how dynamic capabilities can be developed relative to a firm’s ability and embedded context.

Inter‐organizational innovation networks provide opportunities to exploit complementary resources that reside beyond the boundary of the firm. The shifting locus of innovation and value creation away from the “sole firm as innovator” poses important questions about the nature of these resources and the capabilities needed to leverage them for competitive advantage. The purpose of this paper is to describe research into producing design‐oriented knowledge, for configuring inter‐organizational networks as a means of accessing such resources for innovation.

This exploratory investigation conflates emerging constructs and themes analytically induced from a systematic survey of 142 scholarly and practitioner articles and 45 expert interviews with senior professionals operating in the biopharmaceuticals industry.

The findings identify seven theoretically and empirically grounded technological rules associated with effective inter‐organizational networking for innovation. They embody evidence ex post of networking theory and practice. Based on van Aken's seminal work, they comprise design‐oriented knowledge to provide a solution architecture of viable action options for managers, a priori, to purposefully design innovation networks. Collectively these rules represent a tentative taxonomy, a means of classifying design principles, to assist managers in navigating their decision‐making processes.

This study demonstrates the need for explicit design‐oriented knowledge for configuring inter‐organizational networks. Finally, the implications of the findings for strategic management theory are discussed from a dynamic capabilities view. The significance of a dynamic capability which addresses the renewal of network‐specific resources is highlighted.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate key criteria underpinning network-facilitated green innovation capability development in micro-firms.

Micro-firms, those firms with less than ten full-time employees, need to continuously innovate in order to sustain their business in the emerging green economy. This study uses an interpretive multiple case approach to explore micro-firm owner-manager (O/M) green innovation activities, encompassing O/M views on facilitated network engagement in Ireland and Canada over a 12-month period.

The findings show that proactive implementation of green innovation is influenced by the O/M’s natural environment orientation and the potential for economic gain, while facilitated networks provide an additional resource that the O/M can draw from that allows the O/M to test new ideas, comprehend new and existing legislation and identify potential supports in pursuit of green innovation capability development within the micro-firm.

This study offers a contribution to knowledge in the areas of green innovation, micro-firm capabilities and facilitated network engagement. However, the sample size is small and distance was a challenge, yet data and case protocols are in place which allow for replication of the study. As the research is embedded in the resource and capability theories, alternative theoretical frameworks may shed a different light on the research question.

Prior studies have found that facilitated networks have a positive impact on micro-firm sustainability as these networks enhance the firm’s constrained resource base. The proposed framework can be used as a guideline for support organisations including facilitated networks in assisting micro-firms in reaching their green innovation goals and objectives. It can also be used by micro-firms in the attainment of the green innovation capability.

The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of organizational readiness (OR) dimensions (organizational culture, climate and capability) on three types of innovations (INs) (service, process IN and entering new markets) in telecommunication companies. The study also tests the mediating role of employee engagement (EE) in the causal relationship between OR and IN.

In the theoretical framework, a deep and broad review of the literature was presented to determine the study variables and hypotheses that were tested in the field study. The study sample consisted of 306 respondents distributed to the headquarters of the three companies (Zain, Orange and Umniah) working in the Jordanian telecommunications sector. The number of questionnaires retrieved and valid for analysis was 255 (83%).

Results indicate a positive effect of organizational climate and organizational capacity on process IN and entering new markets. While organizational culture had no significant effect on the three types of IN EE did not have a mediating role in the relationship between OR and IN.

The results of this study are related to the telecommunications sector as a highly competitive service sector and more able to work remotely with regard to customers, so its results cannot be generalized to other sectors such as the industry sector, which has suffered in recent years from the epidemic more than other sectors.

The study of OR as a concept, dimensions and effects provides great experience for leaders and managers facing the challenges of competition and threats posed by the Covid-19 pandemic. This study also helps researchers to study OR in new areas and in relation to other concepts.

The OR covers a wide field that includes the individual, the group and the company. Therefore, readiness includes a social experience that can extend from the company to the community.

The study gains an important value by revealing that organizational culture as a dimension of readiness does not have a significant impact on IN. With the readiness to respond quickly to challenges, culture can be more inclined to the status quo and the prevailing routine than to IN and change.