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Since the mid‐1980s, the subject of information systems (IS) integration and its role in business process improvement (BPI) has been of considerable interest to business managers and researchers. The present study examines the effects of IS integration on BPI. The moderating effects of industry type, information intensity of the industry, and time since the initiation of the existing program in the firm have also been analyzed. The data for the study were gathered through a survey of Fortune 500 US firms at divisional levels. The results of the study support the hypotheses that data integration and communication networks integration affect the dimensions of BPI. However, none of the moderators, except industry type, was found significantly affecting the relationships between networks integration and process improvement effect and customer focus.

The purpose of this paper is to present a case, with live examples from a construction industry development initiative in India, for developing a proactive construction clients charter; and a core set of key performance indicators (KPIs), as basic tools for facilitating the expectations of this special issue in “securing clients’ organisational objectives and project aspirations throughout construction project lifecycles” apart from empowering construction industry improvements in general.

Having identified 19 critical issues in the Indian construction industry at two construction clients-academia roundtables, two of the “action teams” formed to address specific issue sets, separately developed a relevant construction clients charter and useful KPIs, respectively, through a combination of literature reviews and brainstorming conference calls, along with iterative drafts of, and feedback on interim outputs. Validation of “working papers” presented at a “Consolidation Roundtable” of construction clients and their consultants, elicited further suggestions for fine tuning of final outputs.

The charter was formulated in structured steps, including identifying “priorities” under four categories: overall, expectations from supply chains, by supply chains and by end users. The six sub-heads of the charter are on procurement, design, innovation and technology, project execution, human resource development and worker welfare, and quality, safety and sustainability. The “suggested KPIs” for building clients in India enable organisations to choose: from three different groups (i.e. design phase, construction phase, or business outcomes), and at three different levels (i.e. project/organisation level, benchmarking club level, or industry level).

There is no known overarching Construction Clients’ Charter at present. Some project KPI sets are available elsewhere. However, those developed in India, while focusing on project performance, also connect to organisational performance and business outcomes. Furthermore, KPIs are provided to separately probe client, consultant and contractor performance. Significantly, the charter and KPIs are outcomes from an industry-led self-improvement initiative launched with building construction clients at the forefront, rather than a top-down imposition from government. Furthermore, while prioritising client aspirations, they also address common supply chain and end-user concerns, which may also be interpreted as a longer-term win-win-win client’s aspiration.

The concept of lean and ISO 14001 as a combined approach is an evolving strategy for streamlining operational processes and attaining environmental sustainability in the manufacturing context. This paper explores the critical success factors (CSFs) for a combined lean and ISO 14001 implementation in the manufacturing industry for achieving the operational and environmental benefits.

A systematic literature review (SLR) based on Scopus and Web of Science databases is conducted to present peer-reviewed articles on the CSFs for lean and ISO 14001 implementation in manufacturing operations. This article applies the CSF theory to classify the CSFs for a joint lean and ISO 14001 adoption.

Numerous CSFs are synthesised from the SLR across seven theoretical contexts of industry, competitive strategy, managerial position, environmental, temporal, internal/external, monitoring and building/adapting factors for a combined lean and ISO14001 implementation.

Numerous CSFs are synthesised from the SLR across seven theoretical contexts of strategic direction, competitive strategy, leadership and management, environmental, temporal, internal/external, monitoring and continuous process improvement factors for a combined lean and ISO 14001 implementation.

This paper contributes to academic scholarship by providing a theoretical perspective through classification of CSFs for a combined lean and ISO 14001 implementation to achieve operational and environmental performance. This paper also contributes to practitioners and policymakers who can use the emergent theoretical framework for application in practice for a more efficient and effective deployment of both strategies in the manufacturing industry.

To the best of author's knowledge, this study is the first to propose a theoretical framework of CSFs for a combined lean and ISO 14001 implementation based on the CSF theory and SLR findings in the manufacturing industry.

A systematic literature review is performed to reveal the state-of-the-art in the implementation of lean principles in the petroleum industry. This paper aims to generate a conceptual framework and reveal research gaps with respect to lean concept application in the petroleum industry.

After formulating research questions, the search strategy is generated, followed by data extraction, literature review and synthesis of the results. The search covers any studies in peer-reviewed scientific journals and conference proceedings in the period 1990-2017 that discuss the implementation of the lean concept in the petroleum industry.

The lean concept has been used to improve operational and technical aspects, contractor/supplier relationships, team organization and project management practice in the petroleum industry. Based on the literature review, a conceptual framework is generated comprising four main elements: leadership and commitment from management, employee involvement, cooperation and trust with contractors/suppliers and lean project management. These elements are the pillars that are founded on lean philosophy and principles to support technical/operational improvement in the organization. The types of literature identified indicate that the subject of the study is still immature.

This study focuses only on the upstream sector of the petroleum industry, which restricts the generalizability of the results to midstream and downstream businesses.

This paper provides knowledge and information regarding the current state of lean implementation in the petroleum industry. The developed conceptual framework provides general guidance for practitioners regarding lean implementation in the petroleum industry, and is also expected to support research on theory building.

Few studies have discussed the application of the lean concept in the petroleum industry. This paper contributes a platform for researchers and practitioners to comprehend how the lean concept has been applied in the petroleum industry, and provides a foundation for further studies on lean implementation in the petroleum industry.

In the UK healthcare sector, funding and provision of public care facilities has been primarily the responsibility of government through the National Health Service (NHS). After decades of under-investment and consequent effects on the quality of care, new procurement routes are currently being used to improve the standards of facilities to meet the requirements of modern care services. This paper critically reviews these new procurement routes in terms of concepts and suitable areas of application, and examines how the principal procurement methods have evolved into the forms used for UK healthcare facilities. The paper outlines recommendations for further research in assessing the suitability or otherwise of these new procurement methods, both for construction projects generally and specifically for healthcare facilities.

Despite recognition of its importance to Singapore’s economy, the construction industry is plagued by poor safety and productivity performance. Improvement efforts by the government and industry have yielded little results. The purpose of this paper is to propose a framework for developing a productivity and safety monitoring system using Building Information Modelling (BIM).

The framework, Intelligent Productivity and Safety System (IPASS), takes advantage of mandatory requirements for building plans to be submitted for approval in Singapore in BIM format. IPASS is based on a study comprising interviews and a questionnaire-based survey. It uses BIM to integrate buildable design, prevention and control of hazards, and safety assessment.

The authors illustrate a development of IPASS capable of generating productivity and safety scores for construction projects by analysing BIM model information.

The paper demonstrates that BIM can be used to monitor productivity and safety as a project progresses, and help to enhance performance under the two parameters.

IPASS enables collaboration among project stakeholders as they can base their work on analysis of productivity and safety performance before projects start, and as they progress. It is suggested that the BIM model submitted to the authorities should be used for the IPASS application.

IPASS has rule-checking, hazards identification and quality checking capabilities. It is able to identify hazards and risks with the rule-checking capabilities. IPASS enables practitioners to check mistakes and the rationality of a design. It helps to mitigate risks as there are built-in safety measures/controls rules to overcome the problems caused by design deficiency, wrong-material-choice, and more.

The paper provides a step-by-step guide in the guise of a roadmap for service improvement initiatives using importance performance map analysis (IPMA).

To empirically illustrate how IPMA can be applied to any service industry, three sectors are considered; sports and fitness (study A), hospitality (study B) and higher education (study C). Following the proper selection of measuring instruments and their evaluation using structural equation modeling-partial least squares (Smart-PLS), IPMA is applied to identify those attributes having strong total effects (high importance) over the targeted construct (satisfaction) but which also have low average latent variable scores (low performance).

For sports and fitness (study A), the physical aspects and programme quality require managerial attention. For the hospitability sector (study B), it is service commitment, interaction quality and internal sense of happiness. Whereas for higher education (study C), it is administrative quality as well as the element of transformative quality, namely the university’s role in adding to its students’ emotional stability, which needs the attention of the top management.

This study provides researchers and practitioners with a roadmap for applying PLS-SEM and IPMA for continuous service quality improvement. The roadmap extends upon Ringle and Sarstedt’s (2016) work. It highlights critical decisions that need to be considered in the pre-analytical stages of the IPMA application, i.e. at the research design phase in selecting the most appropriate service quality measurement model specifications. It not only contributes to the existing body of knowledge by providing empirical evidence to advance theory development in the quality management field but also has implications for the practitioners in any service sector on where to focus their attention for an effective service improvement.

Organisations constantly seek improvement of organisational practices or market positions by implementing improvement programs and quality initiatives such as ISO certification. An improvement project is any project that aims to make a business process more efficient, flexible, reliable or responsive; or raise the quality of working life. Notes that few organisations make the effort to evaluate the effectiveness of such improvement programs, explores why this might be so, and describes some of the benefits of undertaking evaluation activities. Presents a methodology for selecting Key Performance Indicators most appropriate to selected business processes and assessing an improvement program, and describes the methodology’s implementation in a small Australian software company. Stresses that measurement of performance before and after ostensible improvements is needed for objective assessment of change processes.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce an alternative approach of measuring construction industry performance using maturity modeling. The focus is on introducing a newly developed maturity model referred to as the construction industry macro maturity model (CIM3) and highlighting its use by assessing the maturity of the construction industry of the Province of New Brunswick, Canada.

Current methods of construction industry performance measurement such as labor productivity and competitiveness are briefly reviewed, highlighting their weaknesses. The theoretical underpinnings of the CIM3 are discussed and the implementation of the CIM3 to measure the cost and quality management maturity of the New Brunswick construction industry is presented.

An assessment of the construction industry's maturity using the CIM3 provides a leading indication of performance. This is based on the industry being structured according to key practices areas that contain key practices. The industry's key practices are linked to objectives that lead to the achievement of performance goals. The maturity of the construction industry with respect to its key practices is a function of the relative importance of the key practices and the capabilities of the industry in implementing the key practices. Based on this, the implementation of the CIM3 in New Brunswick found that the NB construction industry is more mature in cost management than in quality management.

This paper contributes to the existing body of knowledge on industry performance measurement, and more particularly, construction industry performance measurement. The concept of maturity modeling applied here promotes and demonstrates the use of leading indicators of performance, as recommended in most performance measurement literature.

The paper seeks to consider relational integration across a network of organisational members. To this end, “relationally integrated value networks” (RIVANS) are conceptualised to engage and empower network members towards well‐focused collaboration that adds value. The aim is to identify the routes towards achieving the desirable integration together with the desired “overall value” that includes the hitherto often neglected “whole life” and end‐user priorities.

Two case studies of enlightened team working are used to examine the power of RIVANS to add value. Deliberations at two subsequent workshops identified the potential for furthering the RIVANS approach and operationalising the value propositions.

Relational integration in networks adds considerable value to projects. Cross‐fertilisation benefits accrue when RIVANS members also participate in other value networks that also include other facilities managers.

Relational agendas have grown steadily over the last 15 years. There is scope for further development for benefits of clients and the supply network. This is despite an apparent retreat from a focus on differentiation to a re‐emerging cost focus.

Each network can benefit from healthy inputs from, and benchmarking against, other networks. The strengths of each network will be enhanced by the steady development of each of its members, mutual feedback and collaborative learning opportunities.

The need for, and potential impact of RIVANS are heightened in the present major economic downturn. Relationally integrated networks can be more resilient, while adding value and building market share through collaborative efficiencies throughout the life cycles of built assets.