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This roadmap is primarily concerned with the adaptive assembly technology situation in Europe, a topic of particular interest as assembly is often the final process within manufacturing operations. Being the final set of operations on the product, and being traditionally labour‐intensive, assembly has been considerably affected by globalisation. Therefore, unlike most technology roadmaps, this report will not focus solely on particular technologies, but will strive to form a broader perspective on the conditions that may come to influence the opportunities, including political aspects and scientific paradigms. The purpose of this paper is to convey a complete view of the global mechanisms that may come to affect technological breakthroughs, and also present strategies that may better prepare for such a forecast.

The paper describes a technological roadmap.

This paper provides a complete overview of all aspects that may come to affect assembly in Europe within the next 20 years.

The paper gives an original Evolvable Ultra Precision Assembly Systems FP6 project result which will be of general interest for strategic R&D.

There are two purposes of this paper: first, to analyze the effect of size and other organizational factors (IT knowledge, IT external support and the level of employees' education) on the use of e‐business; and second, to identify similarities and differences among these factors in micro, small, medium‐sized and large enterprises.

The proposed model is empirically tested using data from the Sectorial e‐Business W@tch survey. A logit estimation for the whole sample and for each type of firm size has been implemented on the use of e‐business.

The study finds positive and significant effects of all the organizational factors on the intensity of e‐business use. When analyzing the effect of size, it was found that medium‐sized and large firms are more likely to use e‐business more intensively. Although medium‐sized and large firms are similar, some differences have been found between small and medium‐sized firms. Only small firms use IT outsourcing as a key factor to use e‐business.

This study is based on a cross‐sectional data set. Longitudinal research would be needed for comparing results over time. Future studies could focus on the use of each type of e‐business technology, instead of a global measure of e‐business use. Future research could also analyze the differences of e‐business adoption rates among countries.

The paper concludes that small and micro firms are less likely to conduct e‐business than medium‐sized and large firms. An important influence on the use of e‐business is workforce education, implying that training could substitute hiring IT employees. Outsourcing IT activities is a suitable strategy only for small firms.

The paper contributes to the literature on e‐business with new evidence of the importance of size and human capital. Additionally, an analysis for each firm size has been done, which allows comparison of results.

Evidence suggests that unorganized manufacturing units are extremely credit-starved. The purpose of this paper is to study the effect of such credit unavailability for small firms, and to see if it has altered the erstwhile production organization in a way which has led to the withdrawal of the small firms from both input and output market, leading to increased production outsourcing between the formal and informal firms.

Based on data collected from two textile clusters in Maharashtra, India, the study shows that credit unavailability has led small firms to increasingly work for bigger firms as outsourced units. The paper uses a measure of technology and productivity to undertake logistic regression and sub-sample regressions to confirm production reorganization resulting from credit unavailability. This would provide additional insights for standard measures of intra-country intra-industry trade

The exclusion of the unorganized production units from the formal lending process has, over the years, led to a reorganization of the existing production structure, whereby the small firms are forced to work for bigger formal firms on piece-rate basis. To circumvent their credit issues, the small unorganized sector firms have increasingly started to work for bigger firms as outsourced units.

This is an original research work. The paper fulfils the identified need of addressing how the plaguing social issue of financial exclusion of unorganized firms has led to production reorganization.

The recent pandemic period (COVID-19), while negatively impacting many companies, has contributed to the growth and adoption of online platforms such as marketplaces and e-commerce. This environment has led many companies, which previously acted only through offline channels, to adopt new technologies and online channels and develop new e-commerce strategies. Small and micro enterprises are most vulnerable due to their limited resources and lack of capabilities. For this reason, the main objective of this paper is to unveil the e-commerce implementation capabilities that micro and small enterprises should build and the challenges they must face when managing an e-commerce strategy.

The authors adopted an inductive qualitative research design approach focused on multiple case studies. The firms operate in the food and beverage industry.

The findings identify several e-commerce implementation capabilities that micro and small enterprises operating in the food and beverage industry should build to manage e-commerce strategies. These are related to outsourcing management, multichannel management, time management, internal stock management and marketplace choice. Moreover, the paper identifies key e-commerce implementation challenges these firms must cope with. These regard distribution management, potential loss of control, fresh product management and lack of resources, time and capabilities.

This research shows that proper capacity management in the implementation of micro and small enterprises e-commerce strategies is critical to achieving efficient results and preventing challenges that threaten such strategies. The research offers guidelines and frameworks for micro and small enterprises to understand how to manage e-commerce and face its challenges.

How to manage outsourced employees in interorganizational teams with triangular relationships has not yet attracted enough attention. Based on relative deprivation theory, this study explores how relative deprivation affects outsourced employees’ innovative behavior and investigates the complex moderating effects of dual organizational support.

The authors tested their hypothesis by conducting a two-wave survey; responses to a questionnaire were collected from 283 outsourced employees and their managers among 52 client organizations.

Results found that relative deprivation negatively influences the outsourced employees’ innovative behavior by eliciting their perceptions of status conflict. Support from client (supplier) organization attenuates (aggravates) the positive impact of relative deprivation on innovative behavior throughout status conflict. The moderating effect of client organizational support was moderated by support from supplier organization.

The authors selected the outsourced employees in a Chinese context to conduct this study, and the results need to be generalized in future research.

Client organizational support can alleviate the negative effect of relative deprivation on outsourced employees, whereas supplier organization support aggravates the negative effect; managers should pay attention to the different effects of the two organizations’ support and provide reasonable support for outsourced employees.

This study identified the mechanism of relative deprivation’s effect on outsourced employees’ innovative behavior from the perspective of interpersonal interaction and compared the effect of support from dual organizations. This study expands the research on triangular relationships, relative deprivation, status conflict and other field.

This paper analyzes how information systems (IS) can serve as tools of neo-colonial control in offshore outsourcing of research and development work. It draws on critical work examining business and knowledge process outsourcing.

The paper reports an empirical study of how laboratory information management systems (LIMS) shape offshore outsourcing practices involving Western client firms and Indian contract research organizations (CROs) in the pharmaceutical industry. The study adopted a multi-actor perspective, involving interviews with representatives of Western clients, Indian CROs, system validation auditors, and software vendors. The analysis was iterative and interpretative, guided by postcolonial sensitivity to themes of power and control.

The study found that LIMS act as tools of neo-colonial control at three levels. As Western clients specify particular brands of LIMS, they create a hierarchy among local CROs and impact the development of the local LIMS industry. At inter-organizational level, LIMS shape relationships by allowing remote, real-time and retrospective surveillance of CROs’ work. At individual level, the ability of LIMS to support micro-modularizing of research leads to routinization of scientific discovery, negatively impacting scientists’ work satisfaction.

By examining multiple actors’ perceptions of IS, this paper looks beyond the rhetoric of system efficiency characteristic of most international business research. As it explores dynamics of power and control surrounding IS, it also questions the proposition that outsourcing of high-end work will move emerging economies upstream in the value chain.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the different types of work and to examine how they are related with open innovation, either by carrying out relationships with companies or external agents, or through the outsourcing of qualified and creative work.

After the theoretical analysis of the different types of work, the empirical study uses qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) to analyze the different variables and their relations which favor open innovation.

The combination of the variables in the QCA makes it possible to obtain three paths among the characteristics of the qualified work and open innovation, with a positive empirical result. The general conclusion is that the motivation level of the qualified work is relevant for open innovation.

The study has some limitations, notably the reliability of the measurement of the variables, based on the subjective assessment of the respondent employee. The limited number of cases is always a question to be considered, although the statistical results show consistency in the results.

The most important implication for practice is the relevant connection between the internal efficiency in the management of the different types of work and open innovation.

The originality and value of this paper consist in relating the internal efficiency in the work management with the effectiveness and success of open innovation.

A firm will seek an optimal balance between internal R&D and technology outsourcing when formulating its innovation strategy. This paper aims to provide a review of the determinants of firm's innovation strategy, and performs an empirical study on a sample from Chinese high‐tech industry, with the purpose of identifying two aspects of the issue: the choice patterns of Chinese firms over innovation strategy, and the innovation effect elasticity of different strategies.

The development of a multiple regression model supported by data from industry level and a statistic analysis.

Outsourcing is the major innovation strategy adopted by most Chinese high‐tech firms, especially technology import, which implies the imperfection of Chinese innovation service system. The empirical analysis also indicates the insufficiency of internal R&D expenditure and the weakness of absorptive capacity in Chinese high‐tech firms. Although, Chinese high‐tech firms prefer the outsourcing strategy in their innovation, the contribution of outsourcing is much smaller than that of internal R&D. When expenditures are increased by the same rate, the innovation output form internal R&D is twice the output of outsourcing. For improving Chinese firms' innovation efficiency, the reform of innovation service system is needed on the macro‐level, while on the micro‐level, it calls for firms to readjust their innovation strategy portfolio.

This paper will make up for the deficiency in current researches on innovation, which often apply firm samples in developed countries, and lack evidences from firm samples in developing countries. In addition, it will provide the decision‐making basis for Chinese Government's current actions in constructing and improving China's innovation service system.

The purpose of this paper is to reduce the research gap in private sector participation in the Danish and German health systems, where empirical evidence is still very scarce compared with the impressive accumulation of similar literature in Anglo-Saxon countries.

Based on the findings of two case studies – one Danish and the other, a German hospital – the paper assesses the future potential of different private sector participation strategies in health care.

The assessment is that low-level private sector participation approaches such as outsourcing and concession models remain limited and specialised financing instruments for health care in Denmark and Germany due to legal restrictions and lesser importance being placed on operational financial savings and improved management than on achieving strategic goals. Furthermore, existing approaches do not necessarily prepare the ground for public-private partnerships.

To date, longitudinal studies of private sector participation in health care are almost non-existent for continental Europe, yet critical for the assessment of the outcomes of long-term projects of ten to 40 years' duration. In addition, there is still a need for more international comparisons, especially for studies comparing more than two countries.

Case studies about private sector participation in health care with transnational European or international comparisons are very scarce. The paper, which compares two cases of a Danish and a German hospital, is therefore a contribution to reducing a relevant research gap. To date, private sector participation in the German health system, in particular, has rarely been discussed in international journal publications.

Many global organizations have identified limited availability of global talent as the primary limitation to their growth in key markets. At the same time, there is growing resistance to standard outsourcing arrangements among high-potential individuals, in locations such as India, who are no longer content serving as low-cost talent to perform narrowly circumscribed tasks that are “thrown over the wall” to them via e-mail. Rather than being second-class corporate citizens, these employees are looking for opportunities to rise into broader management and leadership roles, and are willing to move to a different employer if such possibilities for career growth are unavailable in their current workplace. They aspire to career paths that may include end-to-end responsibility for projects, including direct interface with internal or external customers, and comprehensive ownership of project scoping, implementation, and results. Organizations seeking to fully leverage their global talent must build skill sets among their employees that can enable them to move successfully beyond traditional outsourcing arrangements. Employees who have previously been in outsourcing roles often need to acquire capabilities such as executive presence, fluency in both micro- and macro-management practices, and leading with an agile style that adapts to different global market circumstances. Meanwhile, leaders from established markets must learn to apply a truly global perspective to tasks such as talent recruitment, performance management, and succession planning.