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The purpose of this paper is to test the integrated model of operations strategy as proposed by Schmenner and Swink to explain whether firms trade‐off or accumulate capabilities, taking into account their positions relative to their asset and operating frontiers.

The four major airlines based in Australia were studied. The paper is based on longitudinal data obtained from secondary sources. The four operations capabilities cost, quality, delivery and flexibility, and asset and operating frontiers, were all measured with proxy variables.

The study provides some support for the integrated model. Firms do appear to trade‐off capabilities when their asset and operating frontiers are close to each other. Firms show signs of accumulation when the asset frontiers are expanding significantly over time. There is indirect evidence that firms could be accumulating capabilities when the gap between the two frontiers is large.

The study provides insights into when firms trade‐off or accumulate capabilities. A good understanding of asset and operating frontiers is important in this regard. Managers need to better identify, establish and combine their firms' capabilities in response to varying internal and external contingencies.

The paper provides an original and detailed empirical validation of Schmenner and Swink's integrated model. In doing so, this study contributes to informing and clarifying the debate in the operations strategy area relating to the circumstances in which firms trade‐off and/or accumulate capabilities.

This paper aims to examine the operating frontier, trajectory and absorptive capacity influencing proactive and reactive dimension of supply chain resilience and implementation in inter-organizational relationships.

This paper presents a research model comprises six research hypotheses with five constructs, including trajectory, absorptive capacity, operating frontier, proactive and reactive dimension of supply chain resilience. The hypotheses are tested on data collected from 297 senior managers of Taiwanese manufacturing firms, using structural equation modeling.

The study provides insights into how supply chain members can reinforce their operating frontier, trajectory and absorptive capacity activities to improve proactive and reactive dimension of supply chain resilience.

The resultant findings cannot be generalized for all forms of supply chains, as they exclusively reflect those in Taiwan. With the research model developed, cross-industrial studies on various forms of supply chains would be worth conducting to investigate whether their inter-relationship effects differ in relation to inter-organizational supply chain resilience.

This study provides multiple insights for managers and practices seeking to improve inter-organizational supply chain resilience, which have become increasingly popular because their factors enhance coping strategies to achieve corporate goals. The proactive and reactive dimension of supply chain resilience can be effectively improved by enhancing trajectory, absorptive capacity and operating frontier.

This empirical research attempted to fill the gaps created by trajectory and resource-based perspectives in inter-organizational supply chain resilience. This study reveals how supply chain members can reinforce the factors of their coping strategies (i.e. operating frontier, trajectory and absorptive capacity) to make significant improvements, which is not dealt with in previous studies.

The purpose of this study is to develop a performance measurement system of environmental sustainability in service settings and to empirically examine the relationship between the measured environmental sustainability and operating performance.

This study applies exploratory factor analysis (EFA) to a six‐year panel dataset of 984 US hotels to construct a two‐factor standardized measure of environmental sustainability. The authors then conduct a stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) to investigate the relationship between the measured environmental sustainability and the operating performance frontier, considering the impact of operating structure.

Customer behavior and operational decisions are two key drivers of environmental sustainability. There is a positive link between environmental sustainability and operating performance. Operating structure has a significant impact on the operating performance. The performance frontier varies across market segment and location characteristics such as degree of urbanization and climate condition.

The findings indicate that service providers should actively involve customers, and manage both front‐office and back‐office operations in environmental sustainability initiatives. Operating structures that favor the alignment of multiple service supply chain partners' interests contribute positively to performance. The managers should be mindful of varying best‐in‐class performance due to operating unit characteristics such as market segment, and location characteristics.

This study is among the first attempts to develop a performance measurement system of environmental sustainability. The resulted standardized measure of environmental sustainability considers both the revenue and cost impacts in service operations. This research is among the first generation of papers that bring the unique characteristics of service operations, particularly service co‐production, into sustainability research.

The aim of this paper is to develop a contribution to knowledge that adds to the empirical evidence of predictive condition-based maintenance by demonstrating how the availability and reliability of current assets can be improved without costly capital investment, resulting in overall system performance improvements

The empirical, experimental approach, technical action research (TAR), was designed to study a major Middle Eastern airport baggage handling operation. A predictive condition-based maintenance prototype station was installed to monitor the condition of a highly complex system of static and moving assets.

The research provides evidence that the performance frontier for airport baggage handling systems can be improved using automated dynamic monitoring of the vibration and digital image data on baggage trays as they pass a service station. The introduction of low-end innovation, which combines advanced technology and low-cost hardware, reduced asset failures in this complex, high-speed operating environment.

The originality derives from the application of existing hardware with the combination of edge and cloud computing software through architectural innovation, resulting in adaptations to an existing baggage handling system within the context of a time-critical logistics system.

The purpose of this paper is to compare Chinese high-tech firms with other international firms in terms of quality capability and competence.

This study uses data from the GMRG fourth round survey and provides a method for differentiating and empirically measuring quality competence and capability using a sample of 343 plants in 17 countries in the high-tech manufacturing sector.

It is shown that the theory of performance frontiers can be used to explain differences in levels of investment in quality management, as well as competence and capability, in plants across regions with varying levels of economic development. Further, it is shown that plants in China provide an example of a special case in that they do not display the same characteristics as plants in other emerging economies.

The study is limited to the high-tech sector and is also constrained by the countries in which the GMRG data has been gathered.

Investment in quality management methods may not always result in discernible variance in quality indicators. In this study this has been shown to be the case in plants in the industrialized world, highlighting the importance of developing a requisite proficiency in innovation. For the plants in China leverage may lie in focussing on how and where resources are being invested, and how quality management is actually valued within a plant.

The study indicates that although some economies in the world may experience rapid growth this also needs to be tempered by a requisite investment in building human capability.

The evidence indicates that the plants in China in this study do not possess similar levels of quality competence and capability, and struggle to make investment in quality management alter outcomes.

Extant manufacturing strategy research dichotomizes the trade‐off model and the cumulative model, but fails to explain each strategic result. The purpose of this paper is to propose four key antecedents of a trade‐off versus a cumulative model by manufacturing business units (MBUs), and in turn, their association with business performance.

The authors first review literature pertaining to the history and major themes of manufacturing strategy. Next, the authors present a theoretical model with explanations of the methodology and research design used. The model is empirically tested, and conclusions, managerial implications, and future research opportunities that stem from this research effort are provided.

Strategic time orientation, as well as manufacturing practices of supply chain integration intensity and advanced manufacturing technology, are empirically found to be associated with MBUs' combinative competitive capabilities. More specifically, manufacturers following these practices are more apt to realize higher levels combinative capabilities, as depicted by the cumulative model.

The paper shows that these manufacturing practices may extend the time within which the MBU reaches its capability frontiers, and therefore, increase the odds that it can exploit its current resources. Moreover, MBU size negatively moderates the relationship between advanced manufacturing technology and the cumulative model.

This study aims to investigate how measuring the lean practices–performance relationship could add value to businesses.

Case-study methodology was used for the quantitative analysis of self-assessed lean capability scores and key manufacturing performance indicators from a global consumer goods company. Up to 80 sites over 3 years were analysed. Partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) is used to analyse the lean implementation–performance relationship.

Results show that different performance areas may be affected differently and suggest that the measured relationship may depend on the reliability of the self-assessment.

The research is based on the manufacturing sites of a single company, implementing the same lean methodology, producing similar products and using similar process technologies. This helps to control confounding variables but may limit the generalisability of the findings.

Practitioners can use the measurement method to improve lean-based performance-improvement projects. The study suggests that the PLS-SEM technique could improve the calibration of lean-practice self-assessment and could identify further areas for improvement.

Very few papers developed measurement methods for the effectiveness of lean-practice implementation using objective manufacturing performance data within a single multinational company.

This research fills a gap in process science by defining and explaining entropy and the increase of entropy in processes.

This is a theoretical treatment that begins with a conceptual understanding of entropy in thermodynamics and information theory and extends it to the study of degradation and improvement in a transformation process.

A transformation process with three inputs: demand volume, throughput and product design, utilizes a system composed of processors, stores, configuration, human actors, stored data and controllers to provide a product. Elements of the system are aligned with the inputs and each other with a purpose to raise standard of living. Lack of alignment is entropy. Primary causes of increased entropy are changes in inputs and disordering of the system components. Secondary causes result from changes made to cope with the primary causes. Improvement and innovation reduce entropy by providing better alignments and new ways of aligning resources.

This is the first detailed theoretical treatment of entropy in a process science context.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the roles of a supply chain management (SCM) department. To achieve that, this study empirically examines the relationship between internal supply chain structure and operational performance, using survey data collected from 108 Japanese manufacturers.

Based on a literature review of not only organizational theory but also other fields such as marketing, logistics management, operations management and SCM, this study focused on two structural properties, formalization and centralization and divided operational performance to firm-centric efficiency and customer-centric responsiveness. To examine the analytical model using these dimensions, this study conducted a structural equation modeling.

The correlation between centralization of operational tasks and centralization of strategic tasks, the impacts of centralization of both tasks on formalization and the effect of formalization on responsiveness performance were demonstrated. In addition, the reasons for formalization not positively influencing efficiency performance were explored through follow-up interviews.

Manufacturers need to formalize, as much as possible, a wide range of SCM tasks to realize operational excellence. To establish such formalized working methods, it is effective to centralize the authorities of both operational and strategic tasks in a particular department. In addition, inefficiency due to strict logistics service levels is a problem that all players involved in the supply chain of various industries should work together to solve.

The theoretical contribution of this study is that the authors established an empirical process that redefined the constructs of formalization and centralization, developed these measures and examined the impacts of these structural properties on operational performance.

Research into rural entrepreneurship continues to expand, albeit slowly. A common theme in the literature is the creation of value and its extraction from the environment. Rural entrepreneurship potentially covers a wide gamut of activity including the illegal. Also studies into agricultural entrepreneurship particularly traditional accounts of “rurality” tend to emphasise the rural idyll. Most studies tend to concentrate on the application of entrepreneurial theory to issues of rurality and as such exist on the margins of entrepreneurship research – being primarily studies into rurality and not entrepreneurship per se. Rarely do such studies impinge on issues of illegal enterprise that shatter this rural idyll. As a consequence, rural and farming rogues have been neglected as subjects of research. Yet, in the present perceived climate of economic decline in agricultural income, extracting value from the environment can be difficult and can give rise to illegal enterprise in the countryside as well as an increase in the prevalence of farming rogues. The case story, presented in this paper relates to one such illegal enterprise, namely the illegal slaughter of sheep for the Muslim “halal” market, known to those in the know as the smokies trade. Using the case story methodology this paper explores an issue of contemporary illegal enterprise in the countryside telling an important story that is otherwise difficult to evidence empirically.