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The purpose of this paper is to study the effects of lean in a longitudinal context. Lean is currently experiencing its second coming. In spite of this, the current body of research on lean is especially lacking in longitudinal studies.

The methodology used in this study is a longitudinal case study. The authors combined elements of multiple-case study and survey research by analyzing interview data on the same 23 Finnish manufacturing firms at three distinct points in time (1993, 2004 and 2010) with a methodology called qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) that is novel to the field.

The “thick” results of our exploratory contingency theoretic analysis suggest that the holistic and adaptive use of lean bundles is effective. It seems that especially the firm status of ownership and the phase of the business cycle exert an impact on successful lean bundle use. There is also evidence that a certain maturation effect takes place within lean bundle use: lean is increasingly being used as a complete management philosophy.

The authors hope that this research encourages researchers to use more QCA in their research, especially with small samples.

This is a unique longitudinal study on the same 23 manufacturing firms and their development. Furthermore, this study opens new avenues for lean theory development, introduces a new methodology to the field and helps decision makers to gain a better understanding of the long-term dynamics of lean.

The purpose of this article is to discuss the role of operations management in society. The article detects trends, raises critical questions to operations management research and articulates a research agenda to increase the value of such research in addressing societal problems.

This paper evaluates the papers presented at the EurOMA 2019 conference to detect trends and discuss the contributions of operations management research to society. It further goes to identify gaps in the research agenda.

The article finds several important streams of research in operations management: sustainable operations and supply chains, health care and humanitarian operations, innovation, digitalisation and 4.0, risk and resilience. It highlights new trends such as circular economy research and problematises when to stop implementing innovation and how to address and report their potential failure. Importantly, it shows how it is not just a question of offshoring vs reshoring but of constant change in manufacturing that operations management addresses.

The article highlights not just novel research areas but also gaps in the research agenda where operations management seeks to add value to society.

The purpose of this paper is to study the relationships between the capabilities and performance characteristics of logistic service providers (LSPs) in the Caribbean region. The study considers the organization’s process improvement (PI) performance as it relates to their innovation capabilities, their efforts into information sharing and collaboration with customers, their planning for contingencies and considering the uncertainty of their customer’s technology.

A survey was applied to 88 LSP firms with operations in the Caribbean region. Structural equation modeling was used to analyze the hypothesized relationships.

The results indicate that the PI performance of LSPs is significantly related to their innovation capabilities, and that these capabilities are positively related to collaboration and exchange of relevant information. Furthermore, they indicate that information sharing between LSPs and their customers significantly improves the quality of contingency planning. However, the study showed that innovation capabilities are not directly related to the LSPs’ focus on contingency planning and that customers’ technology uncertainty does not have a significant effect on the LSPs’ innovation capabilities.

The sample of LSP firms is limited to three countries of the Caribbean region. Further examination of the model in additional countries and across multiple industrial contexts would increase the validity of the findings and expand to settings such as manufacturing and services.

This study measures operational performance of LSPs from a different perspective: its PI performance, and considers how multiple factors affect this performance.

El propósito de este trabajo es estudiar las relaciones entre las capacidades y características de ejecutoria de los proveedores de servicios de logística (LSP) en la región del Caribe. El estudio considera la ejecutoria en la mejora de los procesos de la organización en relación con sus capacidades de innovación, sus esfuerzos en el intercambio de información y colaboración con los clientes, la planificación de contingencias y teniendo en cuenta la incertidumbre de la tecnología de sus clientes.

Se aplicó una encuesta a 88 empresas de servicios logísticos con operaciones en la región del Caribe. Un modelo de ecuaciones estructurales se utilizó para analizar las hipótesis propuestas.

Los resultados indican que la ejecutoria en la mejora de procesos de los LSP se relaciona significativamente a sus capacidades de innovación, y que estas capacidades se relacionan positivamente con la colaboración y el intercambio de información. Además, los resultados indican que el intercambio de información entre los LSP y sus clientes significativamente mejora la calidad de la planificación de contingencia. Sin embargo, el estudio demostró que las capacidades de innovación no están relacionadas directamente a la planificación de contingencia y que incertidumbre relacionada con la tecnología de los clientes, no tiene un efecto significativo en las capacidades de innovación de las LSP.

La muestra de empresas LSP se limita a tres países de la región del Caribe. La examinación en otros países y en otros contextos industriales aumentaría la validez de los resultados y ampliaría este a otras áreas como la manufactura y los servicios.

Este estudio mide la ejecutoria operacional de los LSP desde una perspectiva diferente: su ejecutoria en la mejora de procesos y considera cómo múltiples factores afectan esta ejecutoria.

This study aims to provide insight into the relationship between job resources (job control and possibilities for development at work) and employee performance, measured as employee productivity and technology-enabled performance, by examining the role of employee well-being (work engagement and emotional exhaustion).

The data comprised two overlapping data sets collected from a large financial institution; Study 1 employed survey data (N = 636), whereas study 2 employed register data on job performance collected over a one-year period combined with survey data (N = 143). The data were analysed through structural equation modelling.

Study 1 indicated that job resources were positively associated with technology-enabled performance more strongly through work engagement than emotional exhaustion. Study 2 revealed that emotional exhaustion was associated with lower employee productivity, whereas work engagement was not. Furthermore, the results indicated that job control was related to higher productivity through a lower level of emotional exhaustion.

The study's findings point to the importance of developing interventions that decrease emotional exhaustion.

This is one of the first studies to measure employee productivity longitudinally as a ratio of inputs (working time) to outputs (relevant job outcomes) over one year. This study contributes to the job demands–resources model (JD-R) literature by showing the importance of job control in fostering both employee productivity and more positive perceptions of technology.

Ownership change has been an overlooked contingency factor in past plant level practice-performance studies. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of ownership changes to practice-performance dynamics by longitudinally following the same 23 manufacturing sites from year 1993 to 2010.

Interview data of the made in Finland – study are used for presenting different paths of plant development in the long term. Both narratives and descriptive statistics are used to support the analysis.

The findings suggest that the benefits of long-term domestic ownership may in fact exceed the positive knowledge spill-over effects that derive from foreign acquisitions. Foreign acquirers seem to “cherry-pick” well-performing sites. Also it seems that the likelihood of inferior performance and plant shutdowns may increase due to foreign acquisitions.

Due to the exploratory nature of the study the sample size did not allow for testing statistical significance of the results.

The exploratory findings of the study open new avenues of theory development for practice-performance studies, and corroborate research in other disciplines such as economics and corporate governance.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze changes in the supply chain and production process, and the effects these changes have had on competitive performance.

The study is longitudinal and was conducted in 1993, 2004 and 2010 with a standard questionnaire. The data have been analyzed by using the Mann-Whitney U-test.

The study indicates that changing a role within the supply chain may help a company to adapt to surrounding changes, but there is no single best way to react to such changes. Companies must be able to position themselves in the new situation.

Even though the study itself and the data are unique, there are still some limitations. Although the results are limited to the sample, they nevertheless give a good insight into the changes that occurred within the sample.

This study is the only longitudinal study in this field to compare three periods of time. This gives a unique perspective to study the changes that have occurred during the last 15 years.

Consumer values increasingly favor sustainable development in products and services, thereby fostering the need to develop new operational and managerial practices that support sustainability in supply chain management. The purpose of this study is to identify relevant product features related to sustainable development in this context, and use the choice of mobile phone as an example in measuring their importance.

The study used two different methods (qualitative and quantitative) in two phases. First it organized focus‐group discussions in order to identify the features of sustainability that affect the choice of a mobile phone. The most significant features served as a starting point for the choice of attributes to be included in the final step, choice‐based conjoint analysis (CBC), which assesses respondents' value functions by means of latent class clustering. Between the two major phases it carried out two additional pre‐tests in order to reduce the number of attributes.

The results provide fundamental information concerning the relative importance of sustainability features in the selection of a mobile phone. The study identified four different clusters of purchasers: updaters, budgeters, environmentalists, and long‐life users. According to the findings, some consumers are willing to pay a premium for sustainability features. The authors discuss the potential implications of the results in the context of supply chain design.

The literature on supply chain management tends to see the consumers as a “black box”. This paper reports the first results of opening this box by linking the supply chain perspective to consumer choice behavior.

The purpose of this paper is to study how, in recent decades, manufacturing sites have reacted to changes in their business environment by developing their management practices. This also makes it possible to predict the behavior and lifecycles of the new practices adopted by companies.

The study is longitudinal, conducted in 1993, 2004 and 2010. It used a standard questionnaire, based on the “Made in Europe” benchmarking study. The results were analysed by Friedman's rank order method. The use of a three (or more) data‐point longitudinal study is the clearest way to reveal changes in, and the behaviour of, the practices.

The data suggest that there is a lifecycle for the practices used in companies and that many of the practices adopted in the late 1990s are already out of date. However, personnel‐related practices seem to last longer than process‐related practices. Furthermore, these practices seem to follow the curve of the Bass diffusion model.

The results are restricted to the sample which is quite small in size, but gives a good insight into the changes occurring within it. This research excludes new practices adopted in recent years, and uses only the questions designed for the first year in which the study was conducted. However, its purpose is to show the evolution of some practices in the form of a unique, longitudinal study. The study also indicates the lifecycles of the practices included in the sample.

This study is the only longitudinal study in its field to use data from three different time periods. It can thus look into and analyze change from a unique perspective.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the applicability to the service business of general models used in the manufacturing environment. This is done by applying Ferdows’s model, “the strategic role of the plant”, in two cases.

This study uses the case approach. One case (IBM Nordic) is based on an interview, while the other case (Google) relies on secondary data. In each case the operations are mapped on Ferdows’s model.

The cases indicate that the same kind of roles can be found in the service business as in traditional manufacturing environments, and that these roles are widely used. However, for communicative purposes, the model was terminologically slightly modified.

Although this study presents the findings of only two cases, the knowledge of material available from public sources leads us to believe that these findings are universal. The model is easy to communicate in the service sector and is thus a very valuable tool.

Models used in the traditional manufacturing and operations management environment have not yet been fully discovered by, nor sufficiently applied in, the service sector. Academics and practitioners are busy trying to create new models in this sector, without noticing that the “old” tools are still usable. Benchmarking against the models used in other sectors might be a worthwhile exercise.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the possibilities and pitfalls of longitudinal studies in the field of operations management (OM).

A longitudinal study conducted in Finland was analyzed from the methodological point of view. In the theoretical part, a framework for analyses was created by studying the literature of longitudinal studies within and without the OM field.

Longitudinal studies are important in revealing root‐cause effects. They are particularly important in generating new ideas and theories and in questioning old ones. However, longitudinal studies are somewhat difficult to conduct and some unexpected challenges may arise, such as the effect of technology development on data retrieval.

The analyses in this study are based on the data obtained in a longitudinal study conducted in the years 1993, 2004 and 2010. The sample in the longitudinal study is quite small for real quantitative statistical analysis, and therefore the conclusions made here are only indicative. However, the purpose of this study is to give some hints and guidance, and thus the lessons learned are valuable.

There are only a few studies describing methodological issues in longitudinal studies in the field of OM, and most of these studies are purely theoretical and do not refer to real experiences. This appears to be one of the first studies describing real experiences from a longitudinal study.