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This paper aims to identify key marketing and supply chain management-related (supply chain management – SCM) capabilities and explore the nature of the linkages between these specific capabilities as shaped by the integrative mechanisms adopted by firms.

Based on the findings from dyadic interviews with 26 marketing and SCM executives from business-to-business firms, the authors develop an empirically grounded conceptual framework.

The authors identify innovativeness and market learning capability as key marketing capabilities and supply chain agility and relational capability as key SCM capabilities. The authors find that relationships between these strategic marketing and SCM capabilities follow a specific pattern. The authors also find that the application of unique integrative mechanisms can cultivate the potential tandem between marketing and SCM capabilities.

The study informs theory with regard to two key areas: relationships among key marketing and SCM capabilities and integrative mechanisms that shape the underlying mechanisms of capability relationships.

Application of organizational dynamics to key marketing and SCM provides a more nuanced understanding of the linkages among such capabilities. A better understanding and application of integrative mechanisms may help managers to develop better tools and means to bundle their key marketing and SCM capabilities effectively.

The qualitative and exploratory nature of the paper will be of significant interest to managers who would like to achieve greater synergy between marketing and SCM capabilities.

The purpose of this paper is to deepen resource-based view theory by analyzing how intellectual capital (IC) affects performance in temporary teams and by showing the moderating role of integrative mechanisms.

The research context focuses on 153 national teams of football (NTF), also referred to as national soccer teams, as an example of temporary groups. A partial least squares (PLS) methodology was utilized on a data set built from transfermarkt.com and FIFA world rankings. Three main hypotheses were developed and tested using first a PLS and then an OLS approach.

The results show how IC contributes to performance, extending the findings of previous studies to the context of temporary teams. Additionally, the results show how some integrative mechanisms such as assembly decisions and team leader experience influence temporary team performance by creating an interaction effect with existing IC.

This study contributes to IC theories for three reasons. First, it applies IC research to a specific research context: temporary teams, where specific organizational capabilities are required to coordinate resources. Second, the study analyzes the role of integrative mechanisms as moderators of the relationship between IC and performance in temporary teams. Third, the study focuses on NTF as an example of temporary teams.

Hotels offer a product of strategic interest to tour operators as far as it determines the cost of a package vacation to a great extent, while it also significantly influences the degree of satisfaction of the tourists who purchase such packages. That, together with the increasingly competitive rivalry among German tour operators, suggests how important it is for the tour operators to exercise some control over the hotel companies they deal with. This study identifies the aspects over which German tour operators exercise control in their relationships with hotel companies they do business with, including the mechanisms or tools used to exercise control.

Absorptive capacity is a knowledge-processing ability that hospitality organizations should hone to create competitive advantage in a fierce business environment. This study aims to examine an integrative model explaining how hospitality organizations infuse external knowledge into competitive advantage via absorptive capacity processes and opportunity-capturing abilities.

This study used structural equation modeling, using the R Lavaan package, with 288 survey responses collected from hospitality employees.

Structural equation modeling with multiple indirect relationships presents a holistic picture of how hospitality organizations develop externally acquired knowledge into organizational outcomes through detailed absorptive capacity processes. Unit size is found to positively moderate the indirect relationship between external acquisition and competitive advantage through knowledge transformation only. Competitiveness level negatively moderates indirect relationships through assimilation and transformation.

The findings highlight the importance of hospitality organizations’ knowledge management capabilities through acquisition, assimilation, transformation and exploitation processes. These integrative mechanisms can be facilitated by intraorganizational coordinative processes through collective interpretations and applications of knowledge and effective organizational routines based on management and technical support.

This study proposes an integrative model encompassing a process perspective and the role of intraorganizational coordination in bridging potential and realized absorptive capacity.

Despite years of research and application, integrated supply chains remain dynamic, multifaceted, and often misunderstood entities. However, in many environments the potential for process improvement remains. This paper categorizes four historical phases of supply chain development and classifies distinct supply chain strategies that are appropriate for each environment. These historical phases of the emergence of the supply chain are then equated to those of processes, facilities, businesses, and industries. A successful supply chain integration effort is then posited to depend on long‐, mid‐, and short‐term strategies and tactics that balance the differentiation of serial supply chain activities and the integrative effort applied. These relationships offer academics and practitioners a contingency perspective of supply chains and a model to define and anticipate supply chain situations as well as mechanisms to develop appropriate responses.

This study aims to assess the impact of a JIT‐selling strategy on organizational structure by generally replicating the previous work of Germain et al.

In contrast to the sample population of logistics managers surveyed by Germain et al. this research draws on data from manufacturing executives with marketing responsibilities. More importantly, a major limitation of the earlier research, use of a single‐item scale measurement of the JIT‐selling construct, is overcome. A structural equation modeling approach was used to assess the impact of JIT‐selling on the organizational structure dimensions of integration, performance control, specialization, and decentralization.

Germain et al. found that JIT‐selling impacts performance control, specialization, and scheduling decentralization but not integration. While the results of this study support earlier findings that JIT‐selling impacts performance control and specialization, the results alternately find support for a relationship between JIT‐selling and integration and refute the previous finding that JIT‐selling is related to decentralization.

The findings generally support the proposition that adoption of a JIT‐selling strategy will result in changes in organizational structure.

Manufacturing managers working to strengthen relationships with customers through a JIT‐selling approach should prepare for organizational change in terms of increased integration, performance control, and specialization.

JIT strategies are being used to strengthen the operations/marketing interface within the manufacturing sector. Specifically, this study assesses the impact of the JIT‐selling strategy on organizational structure in an effort to verify the work of Germain et al.

This paper describes the major barriers across the design‐manufacturing interface and examines ways to overcome them to achieve a smooth production start‐up. An integration model reveals that formalization facilitates a smooth production start‐up. Independent of the degree of formalization during the early development stages, a formal approach is preferred when the new product is introduced into production. Another facilitating factor is the empathy from design towards manufacturing, which can be stimulated by managerial actions. Although the complexity and newness of product and technology hinder a smooth production start‐up, their effect seems to vanish by introducing formalization and by striving for a design team that has empathy towards manufacturing.

Manufacturers have begun to develop and implement strategies that focus on strengthening the operations/marketing interface with customers. Claycomb et al. originally identified and described one such strategy, just‐in‐time (JIT)‐with‐customers, and assessed its impact on organizational structure. Generally, this study seeks to replicate their original work with two primary differences: marketing, rather than logistics executives, are surveyed and structural equation modeling, rather than regression analysis, is used to analyze the data.

Data collected from 180 marketing executives are analyzed using a structural equation modeling approach to assess the impact of JIT‐with‐customers on the organizational structure dimensions of integration, performance control, specialization and decentralization.

Results of this study indicate that JIT‐with‐customers impacts integration, performance control and specialization but is not related to decentralization.

The findings generally support the proposition that adoption of a JIT‐with‐customers strategy will result in changes in organizational structure.

Manufacturing managers working to strengthen relationships with customers through a JIT‐with‐customers approach should prepare for organizational change in terms of increased integration, performance control, and specialization.

JIT strategies focusing on the operations/marketing interface are being implemented within the manufacturing sector. This study assesses the impact of one such strategy, JIT‐with‐customers, for only the second time. The results verify the earlier work of Claycomb et al. and expand the operations/marketing interface literature.

The uncertainties, ambiguities and unknown issues that characterize the beginning of a new product development project have led practitioners and scholars to coin the term “fuzzy front end” to refer to this seminal stage. The causes of many product failures can be traced back to this fuzzy front end. Despite a growing realization of its importance, the meaning of the term “front-end fuzziness” itself remains vague. A theory-based framework is not available to guide thinking and research on this important topic. The purpose of this paper is to create a conceptual framework for fuzzy front end.

This paper applies Daft and Lengel’s (1986) theory of organizational information processing to create a framework for research on the fuzzy front end of product innovation. This framework is used to clarify the concept of front-end fuzziness and identify three sources of fuzziness in the project team’s task environment.

Contrary to the current literature, the authors argue that equivocality rather than uncertainty is the dominant cause of front-end fuzziness. This new conceptualization: appropriately broadens the concept of front-end fuzziness; identifies new problem areas; highlights the need for new solutions; and suggests the need to focus on team vision as a front-end deliverable.

The previous literature used a single uncertainty reduction rationale for integrative mechanisms. Thus, it did not consider that the implementation might change from front end to downstream. The dual theoretical rationale suggests that integrative mechanisms can be implemented differently to focus either on uncertainty or equivocality reduction. In the front end, equivocality is the dominant issue and mechanisms should be implemented in ways that create a rich channel to identify issues and share perspectives. In downstream activities where the dominant issue is uncertainty reduction, mechanisms might be implemented in ways that provide greater quantities of information on known issues.

This new conceptualization of front-end fuzziness provides a better theoretical rationale for how integrative mechanisms enable a project team to work through the fuzziness it faces, creating a clear team vision that guides its downstream efforts.

The nature of the negotiated outcomes of the eight issues of the Dayton Peace Agreement was studied in terms of their integrative and distributive aspects. In cases where integrative elements were found, further analysis was conducted by concentrating on Pruitt's five types of integrative solutions: expanding the pie, cost cutting, non‐specific compensation, logrolling, and bridging. The results showed that real world international negotiations can arrive at integrative agreements even when they involve redistribution of resources (in this case the redistribution of former Yugoslavia). Another conclusion was that an agreement can consist of several distributive outcomes and several integrative outcomes produced by different kinds of mechanisms. Similarly, in single issues more than one mechanism can be used simultaneously. Some distributive bargaining was needed in order to determine how much compensation was required. Finally, each integrative formula had some distributive aspects as well.