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This study investigates the relationship between lean manufacturing practices, management accounting and performance measurement (MAC & PM) practices, organizational strategy, structure, and culture, and facility performance. We extended past research by examining the relationships between lean manufacturing, MAC & PM practices and performance in a broader organizational context. Our study was performed using survey data provided by managers and executives at 368 facilities that had contacted the Shingo Institute for information or that had entered a Shingo Prize competition. Consistent with past research we found a significant positive association between lean manufacturing practices and lean MAC & PM practices. We found that greater employee empowerment, use of process performance measures, and use of lean accounting practices were driven primarily by lean strategy and secondarily by the extent of lean manufacturing practices. We also found that changes in organization structure to support lean are driven primarily by lean strategy and secondarily by lean manufacturing practices. Change toward lean culture, on the other hand, is driven by the extent of lean manufacturing practices. Further, we found that emphasizing process performance measures does not reduce emphasis on results performance measures and emphasizing results performance measures leads to improved financial performance. Process and results measures are being used in tandem and value stream costing has not replaced traditional accounting. The results of our study provide important insights for managers of companies engaged in lean transformation and for academics who teach or research lean accounting.

Rolling out lean operations practices in MNCs’ plants is a complex knowledge transfer process whose design and implementation, though critical to operations performance, to date has not been investigated by operations management, international business, strategy, and organizational design research. Applying conceptual tools drawn from various theoretical approaches to knowledge management, transfer and diffusion, this exploratory study: (a) classifies and interprets lean roll-out processes in MNCs, framing them in terms of (i) knowledge replication strategies (template vs. principles-based), (ii) decentralization of decision making (degree of plant autonomy), and (iii) type of organizational ambidexterity (structural vs. contextual) underlying the process; (b) develops, through seven case studies of lean roll-outs in MNCs’ plants, three testable propositions about what might enhance the lean roll-out process performance, arguing about the individual and combined effect of the three above mentioned dimensions on lean roll-out effectiveness and efficiency. We posit that an approach characterized by principles-based knowledge replication, larger decentralization, and prevalence of contextual ambidexterity positively impacts on roll-out process performance.

It has been suggested that the introduction of a universal code of ethics for business, similar to that of the Hippocratic Oath, would encourage business leaders to engage in ethical decisions. The aim of this study is to empirically investigate what future business leaders learn in business school ethics class and to critically examine if there is any correlation between the education that the Hippocratic Oath refers to and modern business ethics education. This quantitative study surveyed 128 academics that teach ethics to business students in 29 Australian universities in order to find out what business students learn when they study ethics in business schools.

The study found such an overall inconsistency in business ethics education that no specific conclusions can be made apart from concluding that there is no uniform and universal standard into the discipline of ethics and what it teaches. The experts are mainly split between the view that ethics education is about teaching critical thinking or that it is about learning academic and theoretical aspects of the discipline of ethics. A third of the experts also thought the purpose of ethics education was to teach ethical conduct.

This paper also argues that the laissez-faire approach about ethics education from Association for Advancement of Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) has marginalised business ethics education as business schools overwhelmingly tend to scattering ethics topics superficially and incoherently across the curriculum. The study argues that it is critical to establish a universal standard in business ethics education in order to ensure future ethical business leaders and that the first step is to determine a universal definition of ethics.