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The purpose of this paper is to examine how a performance measurement system (PMS) can be designed for small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) operating in a turbulent environment. The current models and frameworks for the design and implementation of a PMS are for large companies; these traditional design and implementation processes are too multi-stage and long term for SMEs operating in a rapidly changing environment.

The study constructs a conceptual framework based on the performance measurement and management literature and empirical evidence from a longitudinal case study. Interviews, an analysis of strategic documents and documentation of the prevailing measurement system were conducted.

The study results reveal the framework for a flexible PMS design. In the framework, the PMS consists of core permanent measures that control the profitability of the company and supportive measures of the realisation of strategic targets. The supportive measures change and develop along with the strategy.

The study provides new understanding about the performance measurement design process in SMEs operating in a turbulent environment. The existing literature presents performance measurement design and implementation process models for large organisations, but these frameworks are too multi-stage and long term for SMEs.

This paper aims to review the literature on knowledge management in the family business, addressing the research question as follows: “How is knowledge managed across generations in the family business?” This study synthesizes the literature, highlighting the role of multiple stakeholders who affect knowledge management along with the phases of the succession process. Stemming from these findings and embracing a practice-based view, this paper offers research directions to guide future contributions on knowledge construction in the family business. The purpose of this study is not only to conclude the previous research but also to provide insights for future research directions and to provide practical implications.

Through a systematic integrative literature review, this paper collects map and analytically examine 63 published peer-reviewed articles related to knowledge management in the family business from 39 academic journals. This paper applies a rigorous approach to identify the sample of articles, map descriptive information of the reviewed literature and map theoretical contributions according to a multi-stakeholder and multi-stage framework.

The sampled articles are analyzed according to a multi-stakeholder and multi-stage framework inspired by Daspit et al. (2016). This study identifies critical gaps emerging from the analysis, thus opening the way to future research directions. In particular, this paper prompts scholars to advance the understanding of family-related knowledge and to clarify the assumptions on knowledge in their research.

This paper contributes to the debate on knowledge management in the family business, by systematizing the current literature. In addition, this study embraces a “knowledge from practice perspective” and offers research directions to guide future contributions on knowledge construction in family business succession and potential areas to further management research investigating the role of family-related knowledge. Practical implications are also provided to benefit family businesses, consultants and policymakers.

This study provides a systematic integrative literature review of the articles published on knowledge management in family business according to a multi-stakeholder and multi-stage framework. Moreover, it draws an agenda for future research advancing a “knowledge from a practice perspective” in the family business literature.

Despite its significance in salespeople management, salespeople expectation management has received little attention in the literature, especially in the industrial marketing literature. In response, the purpose of this study is to leverage the expectation confirmation theory to present a conceptual framework that provides an effective tool for salespeople expectation management.

This study first explores the application and strategic implications of expectation-confirmation theory in salespeople expectation management and theorizes that salespeople establish pre-expectations (expectations that are developed before joining the firm), experience multiple stages of the expectation-confirmation process throughout their sales career with a firm and – in each stage – establish either a longer-term commitment to or permanent disengagement from the firm.

A winning strategy for sales organizations is to recognize salespeople expectations and to meet or beat these expectations. Salespeople expectation management is particularly important in sales organizations that frequently find aligning sales force management strategies with organizational imperatives to be challenging.

This study extends expectation-confirmation theory by presenting a conceptual framework that: identifies the existence of pre-expectations of salespeople and their outcomes; recognizes that the expectation-confirmation process occurs across multiple stages in the salespeople’s career cycle; recognizes that the level of expectations in previous stages of one’s career cycle influences the level of expectations in subsequent stages; and conceptualizes the non-linear relationship between expectations, tenure and turnover intentions.

The multiple expectation-confirmation framework can be used for effective salespeople expectation and turnover management and may also serve as a general model of organizational interventions.

Creativity is often referred to as a seedbed of innovation. As such it holds the key to better performance and the competitiveness of firms. To better understand how creativity influences birth and commercialization of innovations and productive efficiency of firms the paper investigates how hiring of employees with different creative skills impacts innovation process and productivity. The purpose of this paper is to determine the role of creativity in innovation behavior and productive efficiency of firms.

Theoretical framework of the paper rests on pillars of evolutionary, Schumpeterian and endogenous growth literature contributions to the economics of innovation. The multi-stage analytical framework is applied to examine contribution of creativity to the decision of firms to innovate, investment in innovation activities, commercialization of innovations and firm efficiency. The econometric techniques of generalized tobit and simultaneous equations framework are applied to confidential data from the UK Innovation Survey in 2010-2012 period.

The investigation broadens our understanding of factors and forces that shape innovation process and improve productive efficiency of firms. It provides empirical evidence on an impact of the effectiveness of innovation process on the productivity of firms. The results reveal that creative skills contribute to the generation of novel ideas and investment in research and development but the ability to meet customer requirements draws from other organizational skills such as marketing or organizational innovations. Differences are revealed among economic sectors with respect to the forces driving the innovation process.

Further research will be needed to investigate cross-country differences in management of creativity and its contribution to the innovation process and productivity. The limited availability of data on creativity and innovation activities of firms presents the most important limitation in this sense. The framework set by this paper can serve as direction for further investigations.

The results provide implications to managers regarding the management of innovation process. First, the study reveals how creative potential of employees can be optimally exploited in different stages of innovation process. Second, the research highlights number of other factors relevant in this process from the utilization of information, subsidies and the general management of human resources. Finally, the results suggest that sectoral heterogeneity should be taken into account in management of innovation activities of individual firms.

While the impact of creativity on innovation has been addressed previously, this paper is one of first attempts to examine the linkages between management of creativity, effectiveness of innovation process and productive efficiency of firms within a single framework. One of reasons for this is the fact that it relies on the confidential dataset of firms not easily accessible to researchers.

The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to discuss key challenges associated with the use of either simulation or real-world application of intelligent autonomous vehicles (IAVs) in supply network operations; and second, to provide a theoretical and empirical evidence-based methodological framework that supports the integrated application of conceptualisation, simulation, emulation and physical application of IAVs for the effective design of digital supply networks.

First, this study performs a critical review of the extant literature to identify major benefits and shortcomings related to the use of either simulation modelling or real-word application of physical IAVs. Second, commercial and bespoke software applications, along with a three-dimensional validation and verification emulation tool, are developed to evaluate an IAV’s operations in a conceptual warehouse. Third, a commercial depth-sensor is used as a test bed in a physical setting.

The results demonstrate that conceptual and simulation modelling should be initially used to explore alternative supply chain operations in terms of ideal performance while emulation tools and real-world IAV test beds are eminent in validating preferred digital supply chain design options.

The provided analysis framework was developed using literature evidence along with experimental work and research experience, without consulting any industry experts. In addition, this study was developed based on the application of a single physical device application as a test bed and, thus, the authors should further progress with the testing of a physical IAV in an industrial warehouse.

The study provides bespoke simulation modelling and emulation tools that can be useful for supply chain practitioners in effectively designing network operations.

This work contributes in the operations management field by providing both a multi-stage methodological framework and a practical “toolbox” for the proactive assessment and incorporation of IAVs in supply network operations.

The wave of revolutions referred to as the Arab Spring has significantly impacted organizations and contributed to market turbulence. Focusing on spiritual leadership and employee religious values as key determinants of organizational survival in Muslim-majority markets, this paper aims to provide a conceptual framework that can offset consequences of turbulence by leveraging employees’ spiritual foundations to provide a sense of optimism and collective thinking that is vital in times of uncertainty.

The paper reviews the state of turbulence post the Arab Spring and its impact on organizations. It discusses the literature on uncertainty and spiritual leadership, and draws from Islamic human resource literature to identify specific religious values engrained in the local culture.

A multi-staged conceptual model is presented that draws from Islamic principles of Sabr (perseverance), Tawakkul (reliance on God), Ihsan (excelling in work), Reda (acceptance of outcomes) and Al-Amal Al-Jemae’e (teamwork). The multi-staged model can help firms react effectively to turbulence while building their connection to their employee base in Muslim-majority markets.

The paper also advances theoretical work on organizational responses to turbulence, focusing on markets that have received significantly less scholarly attention. Drawing from local spiritual values in a part of the world where religious teachings influence both social and economic aspects of life is an untapped opportunity. It highlights an innovative and important application of religious values in a post-conflict context, and explores a conceptual model that is embedded in the local context rather than borrowing from Western-based models.

Effective Emergency Response Management (ERM) system evaluation is vital to the process of continual improvement within emergency response organizations. The purpose of this paper is to investigate if an entire ERM system can be captured and encoded within a standardized framework.

Employing an exploratory approach the authors apply a mixed methods case study design and inductive reasoning to analyse documentary evidence provided during the inquest into the London Bombings 2005. The authors use content analysis to investigate the nature of ERM system data availability and apply principals of Network Theory to iteratively develop a framework within which data can be encoded.

The authors find that complex ERM system data can be captured and stored within a standardized framework. The authors present a conceptual framework and multi-stage mixed methods process, the Standardized Emergency Response Incident Evaluation System (SERIES) model, to support data collection, storage and interpretation. The findings demonstrate that ERM system evaluation can benefit from the adoption of a standardized mixed-methods approach employing data transformation and triangulation. The authors also demonstrate the potential of the proposed standardized model, by integrating qualitative and quantitative data, to support interpretation and reporting through the use of appropriate data visualization.

The SERIES model provides a practical tool and procedural guidelines to capture and share vital ERM system data and information across all emergency services. It also presents an opportunity to develop a large comprehensive multi-incident dataset to support academic inquiry and partnership between academics and practitioners.

The purpose of this paper is to explain the multi-stage dynamic process of financial distress. An attempt is made to explore multiple adverse heterogeneous events of financial distress leading a firm closer to bankruptcy progressively.

Sample comprises 321 ongoing, 54 suspended and 91 delisted non-financial firms from Pakistan Stock Exchange. Financial distress is segregated into three stages, i.e. profit reduction, mild liquidity (ML) and severe liquidity (SL). Flow diagrams are used to explain the transition of healthy firms through proposed stages of financial distress.

Results showed that firms liquidated/winding-up by court documented SL problems and closed their operations well before the delisting year. It is found that healthy firms are more likely to face SL when faced ML problem at first stage. Distressed firms can recover to a healthy position at any stage, however after approaching to SL, recovery is less expected.

The proposed process will provide a foundation for future studies to develop more relevant, robust and accurate early warning system of corporate failure that will help stakeholders to respond potential crisis accordingly and timely.

Previously, most of the studies used the ex post definition of bankruptcy that is criticized due to the contextual application, sample bias and non-segregation by the degree of liquidity problems. The originality of the proposed ex ante model is its segregation into a three-stage process that can be generalized regardless of specific bankruptcy law.

A workstation‐based system for materials planning is intended to complement a host‐based materials‐planning system, thereby leading to a multi‐level system that combines fully detailed planning procedures with “aggregate” decision support capabilities. Planning objects as well as planning procedures are formulated within the relational database frame‐work. By that means, at execution time the database management system guarantees processing efficiency as well as consistency control. After a short characterisation of the state‐of‐the‐art of database utilisation in conventional materials planning, a set of requirements which have to be met by the proposed approach is formulated. Based on this, the suitability of the relational database model as a framework for multi‐stage materials planning is discussed. In particular, the integration of abstraction hierarchies is emphasised and hierarchical planning procedures adopted from artificial intelligence are integrated into the concept. Some examples adopted from a prototype show that, at least for simple planning problems, it is possible to achieve end‐user support at any level of detail when using a relational database system for materials planning.

This paper aims to provide a systematic framework for organizations to analyze their knowledge reuse processes, and balance codification and personalization within their knowledge strategy according to cost/benefit analysis.

This paper divides knowledge reuse process into a sequence of five stages, and accordingly analyzes costs/benefits under codification and personalization strategies. Markov decision process, a mathematical framework for multi-stage decision-making, is employed to optimize a mixed strategy for knowledge reuse processes within an organization.

Organizations need to consider factors such as the number of reusable knowledge items, reuse patterns, and intra-organizational interest alignment which are critical to determine their optimal mix between codification and personalization. Companies should determine a knowledge strategy based on their knowledge reuse contexts instead of following success cases blindly.

This paper presents an illustrative example to show how this framework might be applied by an organization. However, the validity and reliability of strategic decision-making also depends on the accuracy of the model's parameter values. Firms can adopt many methods as surveys, Delphi method, to determine the parameter values.

The proposed framework offers an opportunity for firms to gain insights by setting the model's parameters to their own reuse contexts/characteristics and conducting what-if analysis.

This paper proposes a formal framework for analyzing knowledge reuse processes and offers organizations guidelines about decision-making of knowledge strategies.