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The theories of transaction‐cost economics, the resource‐based view and the core competencies approach have been used extensively to justify the rationale behind strategic decisions on outsourcing, but their validity has not been investigated yet in comparative empirical research. Additionally, no study has examined the operational effects of these decisions in‐depth. The purpose of this paper is to fill these two gaps in the academic literature.

A literature review confirms the existence of these gaps and informs hypotheses based on the three theories. Additionally, the model for continuous decision making on outsourcing is used to systematically collect data from five cases studies. The cases – all make‐to‐order or engineering‐to‐order – have been analysed on effects for operational performance and control resulting from strategic decision making on outsourcing.

From this evaluation, it appears that these companies perform weakly on the control of the outsourced activities. Furthermore, it seems that the (manufacturing) strategy is disconnected from outsourcing practices and that outsourcing hardly contributes to competitive advantage. Moreover, from some of the case studies it appears that the decision for strategic outsourcing is irreversible. Finally, traditional criteria and behaviour during decision making prevail, i.e. a cost‐driven perspective, which does not address contemporary challenges.

Despite being explorative and based on only five cases, these findings indicate that strategic decision making on outsourcing based on the three theories insufficiently accounts for operational issues that emerge later during manufacturing; it might be necessary to revise the theoretical base for outsourcing to include management of outsourced manufacturing activities.

The findings imply also that managers in companies, in any case those firms that operate on the basis of make‐to‐order or engineering‐to‐order, should be less “rushed” into strategic decision making on outsourcing that has adverse effects. Rather, outsourcing requires integral decision making in contrast to factual decision making that displayed signs of bounded rationality (particularly expressed through the focus on cost savings).

The dominant, one‐sided view of the cost perspectives contributes to the notion that the shareholders' interests for short‐term profitability conflict with long‐term organisational health (apparent through the impact on operational management of outsourcing activities).

Stakeholders involved in strategic decision making might use this research to evaluate fundamentally decisions that cover outsourcing. At the same time, for consultants and practitioners it offers insight that is complementary to the often one‐sided strategic decision making with its focus on cost reductions. Furthermore, this paper demonstrates the limited validity of current theories that underpin strategic decision making on outsourcing and provides an impetus for academics to develop more appropriate theory.

Decision-making structures are commonly associated with the logistics challenges experienced during disaster operations. However, the alignment between the operational level and the decision-making structure is commonly overlooked. The purpose of this paper is to provide an analysis of the fit of both levels and its impact on performance.

The research is developed around a case study in Mexico. Through a review of the disaster management policy in the country, interviews and secondary data, the paper provides an analysis of the current decision-making structure, the logistics activities undertaken by authorities and the impact of the alignment between both components on logistics performance.

The analysis suggests that several of the challenges commonly associated with centralisation are actually rooted on its alignment with the operational level. The logistics performance is negatively affected by faulty assumptions, poorly planned procedures, inconsistent decision-making and poorly designed structures. The case showed the need to align the operational level with a centralised perspective to increase responsiveness, flexibility and the interaction between different organisations.

This paper identifies the impact of the misalignment between the decision-making structure and the operational level on logistics performance, an area currently understudied. It moves from the current argument about the appropriate decision-making structure for disaster management to the identification of components to implement an efficient and effective disaster management system. Additionally, this paper provides recommendations for best practices in humanitarian logistics, which are applicable to Mexico and other countries using a centralised decision-making approach.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to a better understanding of the financial decision-making process of farmers and to highlight the potential role that improved farm financial management (FFM) could play in developing sustainable farm enterprises.

This paper adopts a qualitative approach with 27 semi-structured interviews exploring farmers’ financial decision-making processes. Subsequently, the interview findings were presented to a focus group. Sensemaking theory is adopted as a theoretical lens to develop the empirical findings.

The evidence highlights that FFM has a dual role to play in farmer decision-making. Some FFM activities may act as a cue, which triggers a sensebreaking activity, causing the farmer to enter a process of sensemaking whilst some/other FFM activities are drawn upon to provide a sensegiving role in the sensemaking process. The role of FFM in farmer decision-making is strongly influenced by the decision type (strategic or operational) being undertaken and the farm type (dairy, tillage or beef) in operation.

The literature suggests that the majority of farmers spend little time on financial management. However, there are farmers who have quite a high level of engagement in FFM activities, when undertaking strategic farm expansion decisions. Those FFM activities help them to navigate through operational decision-making and to make sense of their strategic decision-making.

The suppliers are recognized as important external sources who can significantly contribute by working together with the buyer during the innovation process. Operational capabilities of suppliers can be one of the considerable factors when selecting them to participate in the activities at the front-end of innovation. However, proper understanding of the influence of operational capabilities of suppliers on front-end decision-making in apparel product innovation is still very limited particularly in the context of the Sri Lankan apparel industry. Therefore, this study aims to explore the influence of operational capabilities of suppliers on the front-end decision making in apparel product innovation in Sri Lanka.

Both semi-structured interviews and a questionnaire survey were used as data collection techniques. Six senior managers for the interviews and 60 participants for the questionnaire were randomly selected. All those who participated in interviews and the questionnaire respondents have been involved in the front-end of innovation in different apparel manufacturing organizations in Sri Lanka.

The results indicated that the operational capabilities of suppliers had a direct positive influence on front-end decision-making, and the suppliers’ production flexibility was found to be the most influential. Further, the results highlighted that 27.3% of the front-end decisions associated with apparel product innovation in Sri Lanka were influenced by the factors governing operational capabilities of suppliers.

The findings of the research will be beneficial for both academia and industry. The findings will be useful to extend the current understanding and make a noteworthy contribution to this topic and to provide useful and practical guidance to material suppliers and supporting industries who work with Sri Lankan apparel manufacturing.

This paper addresses horizontal supply chain collaboration among autonomous freight carriers in the less-than-truckload industry. The main purpose of the paper is to identify and explain the challenges with joint operational decision-making in this context and investigate the precise role of information technology (IT) therein.

Empirical evidence is gathered by means of exploratory and explanatory case research, with multiple cases at the planning departments of European freight carriers operating in collaborative transportation networks.

Collaborating carriers face fundamental challenges in joint operational planning and control of collaborative transportation, despite the broad availability of state-of-the-art IT. These operational supply chain challenges can be explained by technological differences of the available IT applications, which hinder integration.

Any expectations with regard to state-of-the-art XML or EDI-based IT integration for improved joint operational decision-making in collaborative transportation networks should be considered with care. In particular, the authors' research findings may encourage practitioners to consider new planning and control procedures and develop dedicated IT applications for collaborating freight carriers.

The paper highlights the importance of horizontal supply chain collaboration for small and medium-sized freight carriers in the less-than-truckload industry and conceptualises how collaborative transportation networks are organised. Furthermore, an IT typology is introduced to explain the challenges with joint operational decision-making.

This paper investigates whether changes in autonomy and embeddedness in host locations by foreign owned subsidiaries are associated with improvements in performance by subsidiaries. The results provide evidence that increasing operational decision‐making autonomy is associated with enhanced performance as measured by both subjective and more objective measures of performance. The results on the importance of increasing strategic decision‐making autonomy and embeddedness are less clear, with improved performance being detected in some cases, but only for the subjective measure of performance.

This paper aims to present a dual-perspective framework for maintenance service delivery that should be used by manufacturing companies to structure and manage their maintenance service delivery process, using aggregated historical and real-time data to improve operational decision-making. The framework, built for continuous improvement, allows the exploitation of maintenance data to improve the knowledge of service processes and machines.

The Dual-perspective, data-based decision-making process for maintenance delivery (D3M) framework development and test followed a qualitative approach based on literature reviews and semi-structured interviews. The pool of companies interviewed was expanded from the development to the test stage to increase its applicability and present additional perspectives.

The interviews confirmed that manufacturing companies are interested in exploiting the data generated in the use phase to improve operational decision-making in maintenance service delivery. Feedback to improve the framework methods and tools was collected, as well as suggestions for the introduction of new ones according to the companies' necessities.

The paper presents a novel framework addressing the data-based decision-making process for maintenance service delivery. The D3M framework can be used by manufacturing companies to structure their maintenance service delivery process and improve their knowledge of machines and service processes.

The emerging roles of management accountants as either hybrid accountants or business partners are a cause for much debate in the literature. Of the two characteristics related to these roles, namely information provider and interpreter, and decision-maker, the latter remains under-researched. The present study adds to the decision-maker debate by examining business decision-making involvement. Survey responses from a diverse sample of mostly Institute of Management Accountants (USA) and Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (UK) members were obtained and analysed to examine their current business decision-making involvement, including an investigation guided by role theory into possible contextual factors associated with different levels of decision-making involvement. The business decision-making involvement of management accountants varies significantly, and is less pervasive than widely believed. A significant proportion (53%) of management accountants in traditional management accounting positions report no, or limited, business decision-making involvement. Management accountants employed in smaller firms, and middle-aged professionals, are more likely to be involved in making business decisions. The inverted u-shaped association between age and decision-making involvement identified in this study, requires further investigation. The large cross-sectional analysis of the present study extends prior research which was mostly narrowly focussed due to its case study nature. The varying levels of decision-making involvement, and contextual variables associated with higher level involvement, shed some light on the intricacies of the role of management accountants. Professional associations and educators should note that the roles of today’s management accountants vary greatly between information provider and decision-maker.

The aim of this study is to identify the dimensions used by police officers in Scotland to discriminate and categorise operational situations.

This article was based on two studies: study 1 was a card‐sorting task: 23 officers categorised a set of 19 typical police operational situations, analysed using multi‐dimensional scaling; study 2 was a judgement task: 112 police officers rated 20 situations (19 from study1) in terms of amount of time to make a decision, risk to self, risk to others, familiarity and stress. Frequency data and correlations were calculated.

Study 1 results showed that the two main dimensions used to discriminate between situations were “familiarity” and “risk to the officer”. Study 2 found that most situations required a decision in less than three minutes. Rank and experience were related to familiarity but not to the other judgements. The situations requiring the fastest decisions were also judged to be of higher risk and more unfamiliar. Risks to self and to others were highly correlated, and higher risk situations were judged as more stressful.

This preliminary study shows that knowledge elicitation techniques can be used to improve our understanding of police officers' knowledge and cognitive skills for operational policing.

Good situational judgements form the basis of effective operational decision‐making. Understanding how officers “read” situations and how this develops with expertise can provide valuable information for police training and critical incident management.

Police officers' cognitive skills have rarely been studied in relation to routine operational policing. This study is a first attempt to examine situational judgement skills.