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The purpose of this paper is to study how knowledge management strategy (KMS), technology management strategy (TMS), and information management strategy (IMS) influence an organization’s performance.

The authors use manufacturing data and employ causal modeling, with structural equation modeling, which will enable managers to understand the interrelationships among the use of information, knowledge management, and technology strategy in manufacturing enterprises.

There are two major findings of the research: first, an organization’s financial performance (FINP) is directly dependent on its information management and TMSs, and second, KMSs indirectly influence FINP via mediation.

Managers should be aware of various roles that TMS, IMS, and KMS play on an organization’s performance. The model analysis provides a direction to decision makers in understanding various intricate relationships through which information, technology, and KMSs could impact corporate sustainability.

First, the authors present a specific approach to capture and model information-related strategies in a powerful decisions support system framework. Second, the modeling environment provides examination of non-linear relationships among latent variables, as well as examining additive, moderating, and mediating relations so that other modelers could replicate the experiment in other sectors or enterprises. Last, this work addresses one of the major problems in manufacturing research: the lack of empirical research in sustainability development. The paper shows empirically that both TMS and IMS impact organization’s performance directly and KMS does so indirectly.

The aim of this study is to investigate how knowledge, information, and technology management strategies influence an organization’s financial performance with a focus on the manufacturing industry.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

Information technology use, especially when combined with decentralized decision-making, shows significantly higher productivity. Managers may significantly improve a firm’s financial productivity by effectively using information resources and technology management. An organization’s financial performance is directly dependent on its information management and technology management strategies. And knowledge management strategies indirectly and positively influence financial performance via mediation.

The paper provides strategic insights and practical thinking that have influenced some of the world’s leading organizations.

The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.

The purpose of this study is to investigate how soft lean practices moderate the performance effects of hard lean practices. The authors provide new evidence from the pharmaceutical industry, which is characterized by a highly regulated and technical environment and has been largely uncharted in the lean literature.

Based on a review of the literature, the authors define a set of soft and hard lean practices. The authors test the hypotheses using factor analysis and moderated hierarchical linear regression on a unique dataset containing survey data and real performance measures of 351 pharmaceutical plants.

The results show that soft lean practices can be both enabling and constraining. When management engages in performance measurement, visualisation and employee empowerment the relationship between hard lean practices and performance is positively moderated. On the other hand, when managers emphasise goal setting and work standardisation the performance outcomes are reduced.

Effective lean managers build organisational commitment by motivating other employees to implement lean. They use performance measurement, visualisation and employee empowerment to focus on the “why”. Less effective managers engage in commanding and micro-management. Such managers focus on the “what” by using practices like goal setting and work standardisation.

This article contributes to the literature on lean management by empirically testing the moderator-variable interaction effects between soft and hard lean practices. In addition, it adds new evidence from the important pharmaceutical industry.

The purpose of this paper is to develop an easily implemented and practical stabilizing strategy for the hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) system. As the status of HIL system in the ground verification experiment for space equipment keeps rising, the stability problems introduced by high stiffness of industrial robot and discretization of the system need to be solved ungently. Thus, the study of the system stability is essential and significant.

To study the system stability, a mathematical model is built on the basis of control circle. And root-locus and 3D root-locus method are applied to the model to figure out the relationship between system stability and system parameters.

The mathematical model works well in describing the HIL system in the process of capturing free-floating targets, and the stabilizing strategy can be adopted to improve the system dynamic characteristic which meets the needs of the practical application.

A method named 3D root-locus is extended from traditional root-locus method. And the improved method graphically displays the stability of the system under the influence of multivariable. And the strategy that stabilize the system with elastic component has a strong feasible and promotional value.

Downloading and uploading offer labour‐saving advantages and are now accepted as useful options in online searching. All aspects are here considered, from recent technical advances, applications and legal attitudes. There is also a review of current software for downloading. Recent developments mean a trend to higher internal memory and storage capacity, and greater transmission speeds. Packages now offer access to more than one host, give maximum assistance to the user without being menu‐driven and incorporate the latest developments in artificial intelligence. Disadvantages are in the length of time involved in the process and the fact that the legal issue of copyright has not yet been finalised. Database producers have turned to licensing under contract law, but there is still need to rely on user ethics, and the need for a standard permissions form is highlighted.

The purpose of this article is to understand synergies in merger and acquisition (M&A) transactions.

Provides excerpts from the forthcoming book Synergies: The Art and Science of Making 2+2=5 by Bill Pursche.

The six most common mistakes that acquiring executives make are: defining synergies too narrowly or broadly; missing the window of opportunity; incorrect or insufficient use of incentives; not having the right people involved in synergy capture; mismatch between culture and systems; and using the wrong process.

This paper is a new approach to capturing the value of synergies in M&A, aimed at executives throughout the M&A process.

The aim of this paper is to research the practice of knowledge management (KM) in not-for-profit (NFP), small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to identify gaps in the current body of knowledge. Previous work has been conducted in small, medium and large enterprises; however, NFP SMEs have been underexamined. Given the prevalence of NFP, SMEs’ further research is warranted.

Using a case study methodology, this research advances previous KM work (Hume and Hume, 2008). Based on previous work in SMEs, KM and the application to NFP organizations, this work offers a set of propositions related to strategic development of KM in NFP organizations with multiple data sources across hierarchical levels sought and analyzed within each of the case studies. This process provided data variation. Collection continued until theoretical saturation was achieved. The paper supports analysis with the use of Leximancer 3.0 and offers a unique approach to qualitative research using textual and narrative analysis.

This paper explores the definition of knowledge, the importance of knowledge planning, capture and diffusion and offers development in NFP SMEs. The paper concludes by introducing the link between KM and internal marketing to address the importance of cultural and social issues of “me” which are central to knowledge capture, renewal and sustainable KM in NFP organizations. The paper introduces socialization strategies and informal knowledge capture specific to the transient, volunteer and permanent employee mix in NFP organizations and introduces the notion of understanding the significance of social mission to employees and volunteers in the embodiment of KM.

This study has aimed to access all empirical articles in the field of KM in SMEs. To ensure the consideration of the advancement in wireless, mobile computing technology and smartphones as KM support, articles from 2005 onwards were primarily sought. This search restriction has limited the role of earlier works in the research. It is arguable that the sample cases may not offer a comprehensive coverage of all NFP firms, with the qualitative approach further limiting the generalization of the findings.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, KM has been applied specifically in very few NFP SME firms, with scant exploration of the constructs of socialization, social mission and informal knowledge structure in NFP considered or previously published in academic journals.

The aim of this paper is to present a sampling method using virtual networks to study “hard‐to‐reach” populations. In the ambit of social research, the use of new technologies is still questioned because the selection bias is an obstacle to carry on scientific research on the Internet. In this regard, the authors' hypothesis is that the use of social networking sites (Web 2.0) can be effective for the study of “hard‐to‐reach” populations. The main advantages of this technique are that it can expand the geographical scope and facilitates the identification of individuals with barriers to access. Therefore, the use of virtual networks in non‐probabilistic samples can increase the sample size and its representativeness.

To test this hypothesis, a virtual method was designed using Facebook to identify Argentinean immigrant entrepreneurs in Spain (214 cases). A characteristic of this population is that some individuals are administratively invisible in national statistics because they have double nationality (non‐EU and EU). The use of virtual sampling was combined with an online questionnaire as a complementary tool for Web 2.0 research in behavioural sciences.

The number of cases detected by Facebook and the virtual response rate is higher than traditional snowball technique. The explanation is that people increase their level of confidence because the researcher shows his personal information (Facebook's profile) and also participates in their groups of interest (Facebook's groups). Moreover, the online questionnaires administration allows the quality of the information to be controlled and avoids duplication of cases.

The present article is the first that uses Facebook as an instrument to study immigrants. Therefore its adoption represents a great challenge in the social research field because there are many barriers of access and search. It also proposes a novel mix of traditional methodologies updated with the use of new virtual possibilities of studying hard to reach populations, especially in areas of social research where the contributions of these methods are less developed.

This paper analyses the collapse of credit booms into soft landings or systemic banking crises.

A discrete-time competing risks duration model is employed to disentangle the factors behind the length of benign and harmful credit booms.

The results show that economic growth and monetary authorities play the major role in explaining the differences in the length and outcome of credit booms. Moreover, both types of credit expansions display positive duration dependence, i.e. both are more likely to end as they grow older, but hard landing credit booms have proven to be longer than those that land softly.

This paper contributes to our understanding of what affects the length of credit booms and why some end up creating havoc and others do not. In particular, it calls the attention to the important role that Central Bank independence plays regarding credit booms length and outcome.