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Considerable research efforts have been made to investigate the relative importance of firm‐specific vs industry structure factors in relation to performance variation among firms in the past. However, the vast majority of the research comes from the USA and very little is known about results outside of this domain. The aim of this study was to investigate industry and firm factors producing performance differences among Turkish firms. In order to explore the contributions of firm‐level factors and structural characteristics of industries, the study decomposes the relative impact of industry and firm effects on overall performance which includes the performance items such as sales turnover, market share and profitability.

A quantitative, positivistic approach was adopted with respect to the methodological choice for this study. In order to measure the relative impact of industry and firm effects on performance, the questionnaire developed by Galbreath and Galvin was sent to the e‐mail addresses of the general managers or the other executives at the top level as a web‐link with a covering letter. Because unit of analysis is at the firm level, a single informant is used in the study and the questionnaire was mailed to only one executive from each firm. Having collected the data, the effects of firm‐level factors (resources and capabilities) and industry structure on performance variation were analyzed by hierarchical regression method.

A total of 259 firms from different industries were analyzed and the findings revealed that firm‐level resources had a greater effect in explaining performance variation than industry structure in the Turkish business context. The results of this study confirm that in the resource‐based view of the firm, the firms in Turkey “demonstrated a quite developed form of organizational learning” just like the other emerging economies (i.e. Taiwan, Brazil, Poland and South Korea). Within this framework, Turkish firms especially in automotive, textile, food, tourism and construction industries became important players in the global arena.

This study contributes to the strategic management literature, particularly, in terms of providing comparable data from an emerging country, which is significant in verifying resource‐based theory and generalizing results in a global context. The findings also suggest that the firms need to focus on their unique resources rather than try to control and manipulate structural forces in their industries since “the economies today might best be viewed as resource‐based economies”. It should be noted that, in this business era, the key challenge for the managers is the optimal deployment of existing strategic resources in order to make their organizations achieve sustainable competitive advantage and superior firm performance.

A process of benchmarking implies the use of a model of representation and evaluation of the performance allowing a comparison between firms, and from which a simulation of the effects of the potential actions for each one of these companies can then be carried out. The model that we propose provides a vision of the performance of each company on several successive levels of aggregation and associates various possible views with each one of these levels. The tool which we developed makes it possible to simulate the effects of an improvement action on the interdependent views of the representation. The analysis of the results generated by these various scenarios contributes then to the decision concerning the choice of the objectives of improvement and improvement action plans specific to each partner.

Process variation has become a major concern in the design of many nanometer circuits, including interconnect pipelines. The purpose of this paper is to provide a comprehensive overview of types and sources of all aspects of interconnect process variations.

The impacts of these interconnect process variations on circuit delay and cross‐talk noises along with the two major sources of delays – parametric delay variations and global interconnect delays – have been discussed.

Parametric delay evaluation under process variation method avoids multiple parasitic extractions and multiple delay evaluations as is done in the traditional response surface method. This results in significant speedup. Furthermore, both systematic and random process variations have been contemplated. The systematic variations need to be experimentally modeled and calibrated while the random variations are inherent fluctuations in process parameters due to any reason in manufacturing and hence are non‐deterministic.

This paper usefully reviews process variation effects on very large‐scale integration (VLSI) interconnect.

Usage of gas turbine engines has increased by day due to rising demand for military and civil applications. This case results in investigating diverse topics related to energy efficiency and irreversibility of these systems. The purpose of this paper is to perform a detailed entropy assessment of turbojet engines for different flight conditions.

In this study, for small turbojet engines used in unmanned aerial vehicles, parametric cycle analysis is carried out at (sea level-zero Mach (hereinafter phase-I)) and (altitude of 9,000 m- Mach of 0.7 (hereinafter phase-II)). Based on this analysis, variation of performance and thermodynamic parameters with respect to change in isentropic efficiency of the compressor (CIE) and turbine (TIE) is examined at both phases. In this context, the examined ranges for CIE is between 0.78 and 0.88 whereas TIE is between 0.85 and 0.95.

Increasing isentropic efficiency decreases entropy production of the small turbojet engine. Moreover, the highest entropy production occurs in the combustor in the comparison of other components. Namely, it decreases from 2.81 to 2.69 kW/K at phase-I and decreases from 1.44 to 1.39 kW/K at phase-II owing to rising CIE.

It is thought that this study helps in understanding the relationship between entropy production and the efficiency of components. Namely, the approach used in the current analysis could help decision-makers or designers to determine the optimum value of design variables.

Due to rising isentropic efficiencies of both components, it is observed that specific fuel consumption (SFC) decreases whereas specific thrust (ST) increases. Also, the isentropic efficiency of a compressor affects relatively SFC and ST higher than that of the turbine.

Power consumption is a top priority in high-performance asynchronous circuit design today. The purpose of this study is to provide a spatial correlation-aware statistical dual-threshold voltage design method for low-power design of template-based asynchronous circuits.

In this paper, the authors proposed a statistical dual-threshold voltage design of template-based asynchronous circuits considering process variations with spatial correlation. The utilized circuit model is an extended Timed Petri-Net which captures the dynamic behavior of the asynchronous circuit with statistical delay and power values. To have a more comprehensive framework, the authors model the spatial correlation information of the circuit. The authors applied a genetic optimization algorithm that uses a two-dimensional graph to calculate the power and performance of each threshold voltage assignment.

Experimental results show that using this statistically aware optimization, leakage power of asynchronous circuits can be reduced up to 3X. The authors also show that the spatial correlation may lead to large errors if not being considered in the design of dual-threshold-voltage asynchronous circuits.

The proposed framework is the scheme giving a low-power design of asynchronous circuits compared to other schemes. The comparison exhibits that the proposed method has better results in terms of performance and power. To consider the process variations with spatial correlation, the authors apply the principle component analysis method to transform the correlated variables into uncorrelated ones.

In this study, the performance analysis of the split flow turbofan engine with afterburners has been examined using the parametric cycle analysis method. The purpose of this study is to examine how engine performance is impacted by design parameters and flight ambient values and to develop a software in this context.

Software has been developed using the open-source PYTHON programming language to perform performance analysis. Mach number, compressor/fan pressure ratio, bypass ratio and density were used as parameters. The effects of these variables on engine performance parameters were investigated.

Parametric cycle analysis has been calculated for different flight conditions in the range of 0–2 M and 0–15,000 m altitude for turbofan engines. With this study, basic data were obtained to optimize according to targeted flight conditions.

As a result of the performance analysis, the association between the flight conditions and design parameters of engine were determined. A software has been developed that can be used in the design of supersonic gas turbine engines for fast and easy simulation of the design parameters.

The variables used in the literature have been analyzed, and the results of the studies have been incorporated into the developed software, which can be used in innovative engine design. Software is capable to be developed further with the integration of new algorithms and models.

The purpose of this paper is to close the transparency gap by comparing ex ante and ex post performance disclosure, thus providing important conclusions regarding the transparency of this important German market segment.

Closed-ended real estate funds (CEREFs) are one of the biggest segments of unlisted private equity funds in Germany. CEREFs have a central “profitability promise” that is based on ex ante forecasts given in the prospectus. Typically, equity is tied to these investments for up to 20-30 years, leaving investors highly insecure whether their expectations will be fulfilled and fund managers actually achieve prospected performances ex post.

The performance variance analysis of all German CEREFs outstanding during the global financial crisis reveals that prospect-performance disclosures as well as prospect-performance variances cause substantial problems in Germany due to overestimation biases of many fund managers.

As typical for the recent scholarly debate, also the past disclosure practice in Germany prohibits a long-term performance analysis, unless researchers apply instruments of modern investment analysis like comprehensive financial plans (“Visualisation of Financial Implications)”.

The transparency developments in CEREF-reporting of the last decade deliver precise recommendations regarding the internal and external performance variance analysis, risk-profiles and stress tests for the future fund management.

The introduced methodology would increase transparency in the segment of CEREF and, thus, improve investor protection. Since private households in Germany mainly acquire these funds, this is a contribution to sustainability in private asset management.

The paper develops a new methodological framework for performance measurement of unlisted funds. It then assesses for the first time the impact of transparency and trust on fund performances by applying a performance variance analysis.

This study aims to investigate routines as a conceptual tool to analyze resources management in small and medium-sized enterprises’ (SMEs) productive processes.

The authors developed a qualitative multiple case study with Brazilian companies in the bakery industry. Data were collected through interviews, on-site observation and documentary analysis. Plus, the authors used business process modeling (BPM) techniques to map the observed routines.

The restrictions of SMEs accentuate the improvisation of routines. However, contrary to expected, many of these deviations expand the possibilities of organizational action as they become successful in terms of operational efficiency, which allows these companies to extract performance from ordinary resources and imitable management practices.

The BPM shows its value to track the allocation of resources in SMEs by recording the evolution of its routines and helping to preserve an operational memory. This finding could be useful to help public agencies to develop accessible management tools to assist small business owners.

Most of the conceptual tools developed to analyze the resources management are based on the study of large organizations, which may limit the analysis and lead to restricted or mistaken results if used in another context without proper adaptation. The authors apply an objective and representational epistemological lens to organizational routines to adapt it to the pragmatic context of operations management. Also, the authors suggest that better than a resource-based view, the practice-based view is a theoretical approach more compatible with the resource constraints context of SMEs.

The Miles and Snow typology of product‐market strategy is a potential source of rich insights for developing marketing strategy. However, the drivers of performance for the Prospector, Analyser and Defender strategies have not been thoroughly studied. Using multiple measures of the entrepreneurial dimension of the Miles and Snow typology, clusters business units into the Prospector, Analyser and Defender strategy types. Analyses performance variation in the strategy types using organizational and market‐level variables, and find substantial explanatory power.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the effects of institutional changes on business landscapes and companies performance in Brazil.

The authors have developed a multiple empirical strategy, including qualitative and quantitative methods. As a qualitative method, we used business landscapes to describe how clustered firm performance varies across industries. We collected return on equity (ROE) and equity data from Brazilian listed companies in a 24-years range, and compared three different 8-years institutional periods. As a quantitative method, the authors compared variance across periods and developed a panel analysis assuming fixed and random effects models.

The main results indicate that ROE differences among institutional periods in Brazil are relevant, indicating that there is an important institutional effect on performance and the impacts of those institutional effects may be different across industries. The impact of institutional changes seems to be considerable in understanding industry and firm performance. In addition, the improvement of the institutional framework increases the variance of firm performance around the mean.

The limitations are related to the sample, classification treatment for missing values and outliers.

Managers should consider that institutional settings affect industries in a different manner when developing their strategies.

Despite the fact that the importance of industry, firm and time effects has been empirically examined, there is still an empirical gap concerning if and how institutional changes affect industries and the configuration of business landscapes.