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This paper aims to discuss the firm productivity premium for servitized firms. It discusses servitization across the product value chain and estimates the effects of the range and extent of servitization on productivity premium in manufacturing firms.

This paper develops a conceptual framework and tests the hypotheses on the effects of servitization on productivity premium using linear regression models with a sample of 20,837 Russian manufacturing firms gathered from the Ruslana Bureau van Dijk database and the Russian customs service.

Servitized firms exhibit higher total factor productivity and labor productivity. The labor productivity premium increases with the number of services offered. However, the impact of services on productivity varies along the product value chain: postmanufacturing and postsales services enhance productivity premium, while manufacturing and back-office services diminish them. The effect of establishment services remains ambiguous.

This paper offers an analytical framework for firms to assess their servitization strategies. These strategies should be gradual, focused on enhancing firm efficiency rather than being an end goal. Firms should initiate the process by introducing services at the postproduction and postsales stages of the product creation chain to achieve productivity premium.

The paper extends the evidence on firm-level productivity drivers and contributes to the servitization theory. A servitization strategy should be portfolio-based, considering both the potential gains and losses in productivity resulting from the implementation of specific services.

This study investigates the optimum size for manufacturing firms and the impact of subcontracting on firms' likelihood of achieving their optimal scale in Vietnam.

Using data from the enterprise census in 2017 and 2021, the paper first estimates the production function to identify the optimum firm size for manufacturing firms and then, applies the logit model to investigate factors associated with the optimal firm size.

The study reveals that medium-sized firms exhibit the highest level of productivity. Nevertheless, a consistent trend emerges, indicating that nearly 90% of manufacturing firms in Vietnam operated below their optimal scale in both 2017 and 2021. An analysis of the impact of subcontracting on firms' likelihood to achieve their optimal scale emphasizes its crucial role, especially for foreign firms, exerting an influence nearly five times greater than that of the judiciary system.

The paper's findings offer crucial policy implications, suggesting that initiatives aimed at enhancing the overall productivity of the manufacturing sector should prioritise facilitating contract arrangements to encourage firms to reach their optimal size. These insights are also valuable for other countries with comparable firm size distributions.

This paper provides the first empirical evidence on the relationship between firm size and productivity as well as the role of subcontracting in firms' ability to reach their optimal scale in a country with a right-skewed distribution of firm sizes.

This study examines the performance of India's food processing sector by estimating its output growth, technical efficiency (TE) and input-driven growth (IDG)

This study used panel data from six food processing manufacturing industries for the period 2000–01 to 2017–18. Technical efficiency and input-driven growth was measured using the parametric half-normal stochastic frontier production function.

The findings of this study showed that the estimated average technical efficiency is 86.6%, which specifies that the Indian food processing sector is technically inefficient. In addition, the output growth rate is 5.5%, driven by high doses of inputs (5.7%), whereas there is no indication of constant returns to scale. However, the food processing sector has experienced more input-driven expansion than either technological or efficiency changes.

This study is limited to India's organized manufacturing food processing sector; the aggregate macro data at a three-digit level based on the national industrial classification (NIC) was used. This study provides robust estimates for industrialists and processors, as well as concrete policy formulations on how overdoses of inputs may lead to high exploitation of resources, whereas outputs can be augmented by implementing upgraded and new technologies.

Previous research has estimated the total factor productivity and technical efficiency only in order to analyze the food sector's performance, but none of the studies have evaluated the share of inputs in growth performance and efficiency. Therefore, this study contributes by measuring growth performance and the share of inputs in the growth performance of India's food processing sector.

The main purpose of this study is to examine the impact of imported inputs on firms' productivity in selected South Asian economies, namely Pakistan, India and Bangladesh. Furthermore, this study explores the complementarity between firms' capabilities and imported inputs in an augmented productivity framework.

A dataset comprising 7117 manufacturing firms of selected South Asian economies was taken from the World Bank for 2013 and 2014. The empirical analysis was based on stochastic frontier models, the ordinary least square method and instrumental variable estimation techniques.

The empirical results show that imported inputs have positive and significant effects on the firms' productivity in the selected countries. Moreover, the study findings demonstrate that firms' capabilities play a complementary role in expanding the firms' production frontier.

The study outcomes suggest that reducing tariffs on imported inputs will enhance the firms' productivity in the selected emerging economies. However, the study further finds that the potential gain of imported inputs is conditional on the firm's capabilities. It implies that firms operating in these countries can improve their performance by allocating more resources to capabilities, such as workers’ training, management and internal R&D effort.

The existing literature on the subject is sceptical about the positive impact of imported inputs on firms' productivity in the case of developing countries. In this regard, the shortage of skilled labour and firms' capabilities are compelling rationales that need to be explored. Thus, the potential contribution of the study lies in explaining the moderating role of firm's capabilities operating in the selected emerging economies in the nexus of imported inputs and productivity.

Based on the research of free trade agreements on alleviating service trade policy heterogeneity and its impact on manufacturing exports, this article aims to not only provide a basis for China's strategy of promoting regional economic integration, but also provide a policy reference for the manufacturing industry to expand the export market space.

This study uses the two principles of “answering” and “scoring” to quantify the indicators of service trade policy heterogeneity to test the relationship between heterogeneity of service trade policy, free trade agreement and manufacturing export.

According to empirical study, the export of Chinese manufacturing firms is severely hampered by the variety of service trade regulations, and the bigger the enterprise, the more hampered it is. In comparison to communications, transport and commerce, the financial industry's policy heterogeneity has a greater negative impact on certain industries. The major methods used to reduce the impact of service trade policy heterogeneity on manufacturing exports are product price increases and product quantity reductions. Also, by reducing the heterogeneity of service trade regulations and fostering industrial exports, the free trade agreement that China has signed can be quite successful. The open commitment in the area of national treatment, however, can reduce policy heterogeneity and advance manufacturing.

In the area of market access, the effect of export is superior to the open promise. Thus, in order to effectively support the stabilization of international trade, China should actively encourage the negotiation and signing of higher-quality and mutually beneficial free trade agreements.

The current wave of decreasing electricity supply to meet the immediate demand of the populace is influencing not only economic growth but also the industrial productivity of the ECOWAS sub-region. In this context, this paper investigates the long-run and causal relationships between electricity consumption and industrial output in selected ECOWAS countries over the period 1971–2017.

The Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) bound testing approach is employed to determine the existence of relationships among the variables. The causal nexus between electricity consumption and industrial output is examined using both the Toda-Yamamoto causality test and the bootstrap-corrected causality technique.

The long run results indicated that increasing electricity supply enhances industrial output only in Benin, Cote d'Ivoire, Gambia, Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria, Senegal, and Sierra Leone. Furthermore, the causality test results confirmed the presence of all four hypotheses in this study, but the two causality tests agree, particularly in the evidence of growth and neutrality hypotheses. In the cases of Benin, Burkina Faso, Gambia, Ghana, Nigeria, and Sierra Leone, a unilateral causality running from electricity consumption to industrial output is found. However, no evidence of causality between electricity consumption and industrial production has been confirmed in Cote d'Ivoire, Guinea Bissau, Liberia and Niger.

The relevant energy stakeholders in the subregion need to reprioritize their policy framework to focus more on the electricity sector of their economies since electricity consumption is identified as an important driver of industrial growth in the West African countries.

This is the first study to provide a comparative and country-specific investigation of the nexus between electricity consumption and industrial output in Africa, particularly in the West African region.

Effective inventory management is crucial for SMEs due to limited resources and higher risks like cash flow, storage space, and stockouts. Hence, the aim is to explore how technology and know-how can be integrated with inventory practices and impact operational performance.

The basis of the analysis was collecting papers from a wide range of databases, which included Scopus, Web of Science, and Google Scholar. In the first phase of the process, a search string with as many as nine related keywords was used to obtain 175 papers. It further filtered them based on their titles and abstracts to retain 95 papers that were included for thorough analysis.

The study introduced innovative methods of measuring inventory practices by exploring the impact of know-how. It is the first of its kind to identify and demonstrate how technical, technological, and behavioral know-how can influence inventory management practices and ultimately impact the performance of emerging SMEs. This study stands out for its comprehensive approach, which covers traditional and modern inventory management technologies in a single study.

The study provides valuable insights into the interplay between technical, technological, and behavioral know-how in inventory management practices and their effects on the performance of emerging SMEs in Industry 5.0 in the light of RBV theory.

The RBV theory and the Industry 5.0 paradigm are used in this study to explore how developing SMEs' inventory management practices influence their performance. This study investigates the effects of traditional and modern inventory management systems on business performance. Incorporating RBV theory with the Industry 5.0 framework investigates firm-specific resources and technological advances in the current industrial revolution. This unique technique advances the literature on inventory management and has industry implications.

Africa's business environment (BE) is characteristically unfriendly and poses severe development challenges. This study evaluates the impact of business climate on productivity in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA).

Macroeconomic data for 51 sub-Saharan African economies from 1990 to 2018 are employed for the analysis. The seemingly unrelated regression model is used to address inter-sectorial linkages.

The study uncovers several findings. First, a high start-up cost substantially leads to productivity losses by limiting the funds available for investment in productivity-enhancing labour and technology and limiting the number of businesses that see the light of day. The productivity impacts of start-up costs are most enormous for industry, followed by services and agriculture. Second, economies with favourable financing environments tend to be more productive economy wide and sector wise. Third, high taxes and tax inefficiency lower productivity by reducing the resource envelope of firms, thus lowering investment amounts. Fourth, poor business infrastructure inflicts the most damage on productivity. Lastly, business administration and macroeconomic environments impact sectoral and economy-wide productivity.

SSA economies must strive to lower the cost of starting a business as high start-up costs injure productivity. One way of reducing start-up costs is to create a one-stop shop for registering and formalising a business. Another way is to automate business registration and administrative processes to reduce red tape and corruption.

The authors extend the body of knowledge by analysing sectoral and economy-wide productivity effects of various business climate indicators while accounting for inter-sectoral linkages, cross-sectional dependence and endogeneity.

The development of prefabrication into full-scale offsite manufacturing processes in the construction industry is paradigm-shifting. Moreover, Building Information Modelling (BIM) is becoming the primary mode of communication and integration in construction projects to facilitate the flow of information. Although research has been performed on BIM and Offsite Construction (OSC), integrating these two concepts remains ambiguous and complex and lacks documentation and structure, especially in New Zealand. Therefore, this paper develops a robust framework for OSC and BIM integration. The study focusses on identifying integration challenges and proposes strategies for overcoming these challenges.

This study applied scientometric analysis, a systematic literature review (SLR) and semi-structured expert interviews to investigate OSC and BIM integration challenges. Multiple themes were investigated and triangulation conducted in this research supports the creation of applicable knowledge in this field.

Multiple gaps, research trends and the pioneer countries in the paper's scope have been identified through scientometric analysis. Then, a classified cluster of challenges for OSC and BIM implementation and integration strategies of OSC and BIM were demonstrated from the findings. The interviews provided comprehensive and complementary data sets and analyses. The findings from the Systematic Literature Review and interview structured the integration framework.

The contribution of this paper to existing knowledge is a developed framework that serves as a guideline for the OSC stakeholders. This framework can assess OSC's alignment with BIM and consolidate strategies for incorporating OSC into a BIM-based project delivery process. The framework consists of 23 strategies categorised into 8 clusters: a policy document, training and professional development, documentation, technology management, governmental development, contract development, accurate definition and detailing and communication. The proposed strategies will streamline integration by reducing potential challenges, thus enhancing project productivity.

The study aims to examine the joint effects of foreign ownership (FO) and involvement in global value chains (GVCs) on the productivity performance of firms from a catching-up country (Poland) and a leader economy (Germany).

The authors use micro-level data on firms combined with several sector-level GVC participation measures. The authors investigate whether the link between productivity and the overall sectoral degree of involvement in global production structures depends on a firm's ownership. The authors verify the robustness of the obtained results by using an instrumental variables approach and weighted regression.

The results show that domestically owned firms are less productive than foreign ones, which is particularly true at low GVC participation levels. However, as GVC involvement increases, the FO productivity premium decreases, leading to productivity catching up between foreign and domestically owned firms. This mechanism is similar in Poland and Germany. However, in the leader country (Germany), the productivity performance of domestically owned firms is more stable along the distribution of GVC involvement.

This study contributes to the foreign direct investment (FDI)–productivity literature by comparing the catching-up and developed countries' perspectives and incorporating the productivity–GVC relationship into the FDI analysis. The authors show that the FO premium is not confined to the developing context but is also present in a leader country. Moreover, the link between productivity and the overall sectoral degree of involvement in global production structures depends on a firm's ownership.