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Both the improvement of productivity and the effectiveness of performance measures have been topics of extreme interest to managers and researchers in recent years. Looks at the potential advantages and disadvantages of using the traditional productivity measure, output/input, as a measure of performance at the firm, work‐unit, individual, product, or product‐line level. Considers the ability of productivity measures to adjust for price changes and to detect factor substitutions. The distortion of productivity measures by fixed expenses and the inability of productivity measures to consider quality changes are among the disadvantage cited. Also, criticisms that have been levelled at traditional cost accounting measures are found to apply to productivity measures. Proposes three criteria that can aid in determining when productivity measures are appropriate as performance measures. Makes recommendations for ways of using productivity measures effectively also.

The purpose of this paper is to identify and examine the major forces that are changing the way biopharmaceutical medications are purchased, distributed, and sold throughout the supply chain. This will become important as healthcare reform moves forward, and logistics will be transformed in this industry.

Multiple interviews with key informants at each level of the value chain were combined with manifest text analysis from practitioner articles to derive key insights into the primary change drivers influencing the future of the biopharmaceutical supply chain.

The research discovered radical shifts in the structure of the biopharmaceutical supply chain. Future research into biopharmaceutical supply chain practices will need to explore three primary issues: How will supply chain member compensation influence the power of parties within the network? How will the role of supply chain intermediaries change the landscape of medication delivery to the end customer? What impact will the role of regulatory constraints on product pedigree and proliferation have on this network? The relationship between these forces is mediated by operations strategy concerning inventory policy, supply chain visibility, and desired service levels.

The research was based on multiple interviews with a convenience sample, as well as text analysis from practitioner articles. These findings are an initial step to guide future more in‐depth research for this dynamic and contextually rich supply chain environment that impacts consumers in every country in the world.

The paper adds insights into the pharmaceutical supply chain, examining this from multiple perspectives.

Describes the process and outcomes of operationalizing the 14 dimensions underlying the SPC implementation/practice construct. Employs a standard procedure to create a measurement instrument comprising 14 measurement scales, with the number of constituent measurement items ranging from one to four, that correspond to the 14 dimensions underlying the SPC implementation/practice construct. Reports the results of assessing three properties of measurement quality for these newly‐created measurement scales, namely: face validity, internal consistency reliability and uni‐dimensionality. Such a measurement instrument can then be applied to examine antecedents and consequences of SPC implementation/practice and to diagnose existing organizational efforts at implementing and practicing SPC and to identify opportunities to improve organizational implementation and practice of this quality improvement intervention. Demonstrates the application and interpretation of the SPC implementation/practice measurement instrument within one organizational setting. Concludes by identifying future research needs.

Viewing creativity through the theoretical lens of the resource‐based view, the paper attempts to answer a fundamental question: is design creativity a static or dynamic capability? If static, then firms need to acquire personnel who are already creative. If dynamic, then personnel's creative talents should be developed through training.

In an exploratory controlled experiment of 74 design engineers from ten firms, two forms of training emphasizing design creativity as static or dynamic capability were applied. Creative designs developed by the participants were judged by professionals inside each organization. Results were analyzed using structural equation modeling.

The exploratory findings support the notion that design creativity is a static capability. In tandem, support for design creativity as a dynamic capability, contingent upon personality traits is apparent. Training may help develop some people's creative skills.

Small sample size limited the ability to distinguish the significance of some effects. Further incubation time for training and an added evaluation step by the judges could have resulted in more apparent effects of training.

Finest candidates for recruitment and development may not be identified based on a limited set of characteristics. Selection should be based on a combination of criteria. To gain the most, training programs should be subject to the individuals' learning styles.

Design creativity should be considered as a static characteristic determined upon recruitment (buy), and as a dynamic one developed post hire (make). The exploratory findings suggest a combined buy and modify approach to design creativity.

Suppliers play a more significant role in the environmental footprint of supply chains than most final manufacturers. The purpose of this paper is to apply transaction costs and institutional theory to help understand why the more conservative, or reactive suppliers may or may not be likely to adopt environmental practices.

This research builds on a prior conceptual paper and uses the results of a survey to test whether transaction costs and institutional theory can provide insight into supplier's adoption of environmental practices.

This research finds that perceived transaction costs affect supplier cooperation in adopting environmental practices. Suppliers are more likely to adopt an environmental practice if information-seeking costs are low or the cost of adoption is considered necessary to maintain the relationship. Data did not support the hypotheses concerning institutional pressures.

There is much research in the area of proactive adoption of environmental business practices. This research looks specifically at what influences the adoption of environmental business practices by suppliers that are more reactive or hesitant to be leaders in this area.

This study aims to examine publications of supply chain management (SCM) researchers from across the world and maps the leadership role of authors and institutions based on how prolific they are in publishing and on network measures of centrality while accounting for the quality of the outlets that they publish in. It aims to inform stakeholders on who the leading SCM scholars are, their primary areas of SCM research, their publication profiles and the nature of their networks. It also identifies and informs on the leading SCM research institutions of the world and where leadership in specific areas of SCM research is emerging from.

Based on SCM papers appearing in a set of seven leading journals over the 15-year period of 2001-2015, publication scores and social network analysis measures of total degree centrality and Bonacich power centrality are used to identify the highest ranked agents in SCM research overall, as well as in some specific areas of SCM research. Social network analysis is also used to examine the nature and scope of the networks of the ranked agents and where leadership in SCM research is emerging from.

Authors and institutions from the USA and UK are found to dominate much of the rankings in SCM research both by publication score and social network analysis measures of centrality. In examining the networks of the very top authors and institutions of the world, their networks are found to be more inward-looking (country-centric) than outward-looking (globally dispersed). Further, researchers in Europe and Asia alike are found to exhibit significant continental inclinations in their network formations with researchers in Europe displaying greater propensity to collaborate with their European-based counterparts and researchers in Asia with their Asian-based counterparts. Also, from among the journals, Supply Chain Management: An International Journal is found to exhibit a far more expansive global reach than any of the other journals.

The journal set used in this study, though representative of high-quality SCM research outlets, is not exhaustive of all potential outlets that publish SCM research. Further, the measure of quality that this study assigns to the various publications is based solely on a publication score that accounts for the quality of the journals, as rated by Association of Business Schools that the papers appear in and nothing else.

By informing the community of stakeholders of SCM research about the top-ranked SCM authors, institutions and countries of the world, the nature of their networks, as well as what the primary areas of SCM research of the leading authors in the world are, this research provides stakeholders, including managers, researchers and students, information that is helpful to them not only because of the insights it provides but also for the gauging of potential for embedding themselves in specific networks, engaging in collaborative research with the leading agents or pursuing educational opportunities with them.

This research is the first of its kind to identify and rank the top SCM authors and institutions from across the world using a representative set of seven leading SCM and primary OM journals based on publication scores and social network measures of centrality. The research is also the first of its kind to identify and rank the top authors and institutions within specific areas of SCM research and to identify future research opportunities relating to aspects of collaboration and networking in research endeavors.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the history and existing research on continuous improvement (CI).

Extensive review of the literature.

This paper provides an overview of CI, its inception, how it evolved into sophisticated methodologies used in organizations today, and existing research in this field in the literature.

The literature on classification of CI has so far been very limited. The paper reviews a large number of papers in this field and presents the overview of various CI implementation practices demonstrated by manufacturing organizations globally. It also highlights the sophisticated CI methodologies suggested by various researchers and practitioners in the field of CI.

The literature on classification of CI has so far been very limited. The paper reviews a large number of papers in this field and presents the overview of various CI implementation practices demonstrated by manufacturing organizations globally. It also highlights the sophisticated CI methodologies suggested by various researchers and practitioners in the field of CI.

The paper contains a comprehensive listing of publications on the field in question and its classification. It will be useful to researchers, improvement professionals and others concerned with improvement to understand the significance of CI. It should be of value to practitioners of CI programmes and to academics who are interested in how CI has evolved, and where it is today. To the authors’ knowledge, no recent papers have provided an historical perspective of CI.

The purpose of this paper is to understand how supply chain actors in an Italian cashmere supply chain reacted to dependence and power use during the Covid-19 crisis and how this affected their perceptions of justice.

The research took a case study approach exploring issues of dependence, power and justice in a multi-tier luxury cashmere supply chain.

The authors found two types of dependence: Craftmanship-induced buyer dependence and Market-position-induced supplier dependence. The authors also identified four key archetypes emerging from the dynamics of dependence, power and justice during Covid-19. In the repressive archetype, buying firms perceive their suppliers as dependent and use mediated power through coercive tactics, leading the suppliers to perceive interactional, procedural and distributive injustice and use reciprocal coercive tactics against the buying firms in the form of coopetition. In the restrictive archetype, buying firms that are aware of their dependence on their suppliers use mediated power through contracts, with suppliers perceiving distributive injustice and developing ways to circumvent the brands. In the relational archetype, the awareness of craftmanship-induced buyer dependence leads buying firms to use non-mediated power through collaboration, but suppliers still do not perceive distributive justice, as there is no business security or future orders. In the resilient archetype, buying firms are aware of their own craftmanship-induced dependence and combine mediated and non-mediated power by giving the suppliers sustainable orders, which leads suppliers to perceive each justice type positively.

This paper shows how the actors in a specific supply chain react to and cope with one of the worst health crises in living memory, thereby providing advice for supply chain management in future crises.

Organizations are changing their new product development processes in order to introduce improvements to innovation performance. The purpose of this study is two‐fold. First, we wish to characterize the change process to examine whether the approach taken represents reengineering, or continuous quality improvement. Second, we wish to compare the process of change to an ideal model of change, and see how closely practice followed theory. Case studies of six companies are developed from interviews of executives, reengineering team members, and other organizational members. The actual change process tended to consist of components of both reengineering and continuous quality improvement, and there were some significant gaps between practice and theory.

Although the prior literature has identified the relevance of dealer participation for multinational enterprises (MNEs), it is unclear whether such participation could also be an important means for local dealers to learn from MNEs. By adopting local firms’ viewpoint, our study draws on organizational learning theory to examine how local dealers benefit from their participation with foreign suppliers in Africa.

The empirical setting is a combinative dataset of secondary data and primary survey of 164 small- and medium-sized local dealers with nine subsidiaries of a Chinese motorcycle company in six countries of Sub-Saharan Africa.

This research shows that dealer participation is positively associated with dealer performance, and this positive effect is stronger when local dealers operate in regions with low government corruption and high government support. However, the positive relationship is weaker when local dealers use the local tongue extensively but becomes stronger when their foreign suppliers have a high dealer coverage.

By taking a local-participant perspective, our study extends the participation literature to show how firms from a resource-constrained region may benefit from their proactive participation with foreign counterparts. Additionally, we identify the boundary conditions of institutional factors and strategic choices of local dealers and foreign suppliers, providing a nuanced understanding of firm behaviors in complex and uncertain markets.