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Over the past decades, analyses of the functioning of professional sport leagues have been done from various angles: economic, financial and sociological; in some cases, comparisons were made between North-American and European leagues. The purpose of this paper is to look at this reality from a different angle, i.e. human capital management, by showing how different the models from both continents are.

Based on an identification of the major elements associated to human capital management in professional sport leagues in North America and Europe, this paper compares competitive and coopetitive strategies using an original framework based on consortium sourcing and pooling dimensions.

The paper underlines the benefits that North-American professional sport leagues get from acquiring players using a consortium sourcing perspective (coopetition). In Europe, the most powerful clubs use their financial resources to get the best players; as a result, it is always the same clubs with get the best results (competition). In the long run, the European approach might result in less attractiveness to TV viewers, and less revenues for TV networks.

This paper helps to understand the differences between professional sport leagues in North America and Europe; it also discusses the risk associated to the adoption, without any adjustment in the human capital management, in Europe of the North-American model based on a coopetitive perspective. This dimension is seldom mentioned in articles dealing with professional sport leagues.

The purpose of this viewpoint is to analyze the emergence of a modified equilibrium in the relationship between buyers (“shippers”) and suppliers (“providers”) of logistical services. In the 1990s, the logistical service providers (LSPs) had relatively little power and were often asked to perform basic operations. The situation has evolved as a result of proactive strategies implemented by some forward-thinking LSPs. In this viewpoint, the emphasis is on the strategies developed by shippers which the authors labeled the “ramp effect”.

The authors discuss the impact of the ramp effect on LSPs’ innovation processes. This viewpoint is based on the authors’ experience in the field, on a literature review focused on the logistics industry and on the purchasing strategies applied to logistical services.

The authors show that the buyers of logistical services have lost some of their power because of two main factors: LSPs’ embeddedness in the shipper’s supply chain and the transformation of LSPs into orchestrators (labeled fourth-party logistics). This viewpoint discusses the relational disequilibrium between shippers and LSPs rather than the cooperative relationships between them.

The ramp effect as a source of innovation and proactive strategies for LSPs has never been covered in the management literature. This viewpoint provides both academics and practitioners with a different perspective of the relational disequilibrium between buyers and sellers of logistical services.

Predicts that in the decade ahead, the purchasing function will have to shed its service and operational perspective and take on the challenge of effective contribution to organizational goals and strategies. Describes how, in this evolution, the make or buy decision and increasing reliance on outsourcing will change the purchasing manager into a manager of integrated operations.

A recent managerial trend is the move towards total quality management (TQM) in all economic sectors: manufacturing, service, public and now the professional services. Successful implementation of TQM requires that staff in adopting organizations change how they work and, in particular, how they relate to customers and co‐workers. However, professionals have several characteristics that make them difficult to manage. Examines some potential difficulties in the TQM approach as it applies to professional service firms, describes some successes and discusses some implementation issues.

The article deals with issues such as the size of a purchasing group, the types of benefits aimed for, and the real beneficiaries of purchasing groups.

The observations are based on the literature, as well as on interviews, mostly with Canadian and US health‐care managers.

Although often associated with the public sector, purchasing groups are also an alternative considered more and more by managers of the private sector. A purchasing group increases volume consolidation, making it possible to have only one negotiation, in order to increase the purchasing group members' power vis‐à‐vis that of its suppliers. However, a purchasing group also constitutes an additional link in the supply chain and its objectives could go contrary to those of some of its members. This is why organisations considering joining a purchasing group should analyse this option strategically, in order to assess correctly the potential long‐term benefits.

This article suggests key questions and an analytical framework to help managers assess the potential benefits and drawbacks of joining a purchase group.

Over the last decade, temporary supply chains (TSCs) have become a well-recognized logistics model. In TSCs, supply chain members are organized for an ad hoc project; they pool resources in order to make the project successful. Although it might be perceived that TSCs are unstable due to their temporary nature, this paper aims to discuss how TSCs can be managed so as to be both stable and agile, while achieving the stated objectives; since the stability-agility context could be really challenging in humanitarian and peacekeeping supply chains, this is the one that has been selected.

The authors reviewed the literature, research reports and electronic documents on humanitarian and peacekeeping supply chains, to understand the main challenges in terms of managerial and social impacts of logistical operations in a disaster context.

The disaster context is very peculiar, since it requires tremendous agility when a natural or man-made catastrophe hits, so that as many lives as possible can be saved and that the situation could get back rapidly to a relatively normal level. The paper shows that TSCs require an advanced level of time and organizational stability of the human and material resources involved in order to be highly flexible. In other words, an efficient TSC relies on “anticipated responsiveness”, a major managerial challenge in the years to come.

The paper clarifies the management of humanitarian and peacekeeping supply chains and identifies the importance of anticipation capability to improve logistical responsiveness.

Developing countries generally have low levels of Internet services, and as a result require different approaches to impact measurement than developed countries. A conceptual framework is proposed which accepts a role for technological innovation, but which rejects technological determinism. It recognizes that economic, social, political and cultural factors affect the penetration and use of the Internet. It emphasizes direct and indirect impacts of the Internet on people, while including impacts on institutions and the environmental factors and policies that affect institutional impacts. Ultimately the Internet is an induced innovation, but developing countries still suffer from the Matthew principle – that those who have most will be given still more. Impacts of the Internet range from communications cost savings, to changes in performance of individual businesses, NGOs, government agencies, and schools, to changes in performance of markets, to those measured in terms of economic growth, equity, health status, knowledge, and environmental quality. The overall view of the impacts of the Internet emerges (as does the picture in a jigsaw puzzle) from combining many studies of specific effects, each conveying a part of the picture. The majority of the people of the world live in low and middle income countries; they have the greatest need of the Internet to help solve the pressing problems of poverty, and they are the least prepared to use the technology and appropriate its benefits. Clearly great benefits are available to developing countries from appropriate uses of even their scarce Internet networks. Many of the institutions affected by the Internet are international. Internet impacts on these international institutions must be confronted. Thus developing countries may face significant risks from participation in international financial, labor and goods and services markets, because of significant gaps in connectivity and in knowledge and information. On the other hand, they may benefit greatly from power uses of the Internet abroad, of which Africans are scarcely aware, such as famine early warning and epidemiological alert systems. Donor agencies encourage the development of the Internet in developing countries, and especially in Africa. Several have agreed to work collaboratively to learn the lessons from their experience. Such efforts are important if the potential of the Internet is to be realized in developing countries, the risks inherent in the Internet are to be avoided or ameliorated, and the net effect to be enhanced equity and social and economic growth.

Despite the significance, no study examines the relationship between supply chain (SC) learning components and focal firm performance. This study aims to investigate different types of SC learning (supplier, customer and internal learning) and their influence on the focal firm’s operational and financial performance.

Grounded in knowledge-based view and absorptive capacity theory, this study applies structural equation modeling to test the conceptual model based on data collected from 213 manufacturing firms in China.

The findings indicate that supplier and customer learning improve internal learning. Customer and internal learning have direct influence on operational performance, whereas internal learning mediates the relationship between supplier learning and operational performance. Moreover, all three dimensions of SC learning do not affect financial performance directly but operational performance plays the mediating role in their relationship.

This study only investigates SC learning outcomes without exploring its antecedents. In addition, SC learning and their impacts on firm performance are tested empirically with cross-sectional data collected only from manufacturing firms in China.

The findings furnish managers to seek for competitive advantages through different types of SC learning.

This study offers new insights concerning the performance implications of SC learning. It divides SC learning into dimensions and shows the distinctive impacts of these dimensions on focal firm’s performance using an empirical method.