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The productivity of a port is a measure that is important to different stakeholders: port administrators (port authority), third-party logistics providers, manufacturers and consumers, among others. This study analyses productivity in terms of vessel movement efficiencies (loading/unloading of cargo) and container release from port facilities. Both factors add to the overall productivity in any port.

A comparative analysis of the productivity of three ports is measured using a Quality Function Deployment (QFD) and benchmarking analysis to help establish strategies that will help improve productivity. Considering the information confidentially the authors will call the ports according to their geographic location. The ports under study are the USA Southeast Port (Port of America), Central Asian Port (Port of Asia) and Central Europe Port (Port of Europe).

This study has established an analysis strategy that allows seeing points of sale in the ports. This study will compare three different continents, only to demonstrate the applicability of QFD and benchmarking. Still, the strategy can be used in ports that compete due to their proximity and location. Identifying the variables to be analyzed made it possible to establish a strategy to increase productivity.

There are many studies that analyze port productivity, but none try to standardize the variables to be compared in different scenarios. This study has compared three ports from three different geographical areas, using the same variables in all three cases. The study critically analyses the performance of three ports and proposes a strategy based on QFD and benchmarking research.

This paper aims to uncover the significance of capacity, capacity utilization (CU) and its role in the quality and productivity improvement in an industrial environment. Besides, the current study is also aiming to explore the various ways to estimate CU and its status across the world.

In the present study, a comprehensive literature review on capacity and CU is carried out to expose the research direction in the field of CU. This work is primarily focused on capacity, CU and their estimation methods based on the research in various industries of different countries and current status in present scenario across the world.

The literature reveals that CU estimation is carried out by some government/central agencies at the national or sector level rather than the industry level in most of the productive nations. As far as industrial growth is concerned, capacity management should be carried out at a particular industry level so that engineering managers can be able to find out loopholes for huge capacity waste within the plant. It is observed that CU in the industrial sectors mainly computed by time series method, survey method, economic approach and engineering approach worldwide.

This paper tries to cover almost all research work in the field of CU in various industrial sectors. However, the organizations which are producing the product with limited demand may get benefit inadequately.

This paper provides a vision to management toward productivity improvement through optimal utilization of available resources. As in most organizations, CU issues are much neglected areas.

This paper provides valuable insights on capacity and CU in the industrial sector across the world. Besides, it focused on comprehensive literature of capacity and various methods to estimate CU in industrial sectors.

This paper aims to investigate firm‐level interactions between productivity and exporting in Uganda's manufacturing sector.

The paper empirically tested two hypotheses that relate to the dynamic gains from trade and also have tended to dominate the literature; self‐selection and learning‐by‐exporting hypotheses. It employs proxies of self‐selection and learning‐by‐exporting obtained from indices of path dependence to fit maximum likelihood estimates of export behavior.

The results provide support for both hypotheses and it is also found that more experienced exporters reap more productivity gains from learning effects which is in line with the view that knowledge spillovers to exporting firms increase with the level of interaction in the global market place. Thus, learning‐by‐exporting is not a “short term” occurrence which takes place only in the first few years of entry in export markets after which it would fizzle out as a firm's exporting experience increases but rather, it is a cumulative process.

This paper generates a number of insights that can guide policy makers in designing policies to promote firm productivity growth that is an engine of growth in the private sector and by extension, would fuel up overall economic growth and poverty reduction.

Previous studies on exports and growth in Uganda have been basically focused on macro‐data analysis; yet, promoting rapid expansion of manufactured exports may require more than just a good macroeconomic policy environment. This study fills the research gap by relating firm‐level productivity performance to the microeconomic environment in which manufacturing firms operate.

Understanding and simulating construction activities is a vital issue from a macro-perspective, since construction is an important contributor in economic development. Although the construction labor productivity frontier has attracted much research effort, the temporal and regional characteristics have not yet been explored. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the long-run equilibrium and dynamics within construction development under a conditional frontier context.

Analogous to the simplified production function, this research adopts the conditional frontier theory to investigate the convergence of construction labor productivity across regions and over time. Error correction models are implemented to identify the long-run equilibrium and dynamics of construction labor productivity against three types of convergence hypotheses, while a panel regression method is used to capture the regional heterogeneity. The developed models are applied to investigate and simulate the construction labor productivity in the Australian states and territories.

The results suggest that construction labor productivity in Australia should converge to stable frontiers in a long-run perspective. The dynamics of the productivity are mainly caused by the technology utilization efficiency levels of the local construction industry, while the influences of changes in technology level and capital depending appear limited. Five regional clusters of the Australian construction labor productivity are suggested by the simulation results, including New South Wales; Australian Capital Territory; Northern Territory, Queensland, and Western Australia; South Australia; and Tasmania and Victoria.

Three types of frontier of construction labor productivity is proposed. An econometric approach is developed to identify the convergence frontier of construction labor productivity across regions over time. The specified model can provides accurate predictions of the construction labor productivity.

One of the distinctive features in Korea and the U.S. trucking industries is the huge difference in the share of owner-operators. While it is around 10~15 percent in the U.S., 80~90% of drivers operate their own truck in Korea. Different from historical explanations of previous researches, this paper deals with this feature theoretically. We examine what brings the difference in asset ownership structures between the Korean and the U.S. trucking industries. Using an analytic framework, we investigate the determinants of truck ownership and the changes in ownership patterns. The model introduces several parameters related to productivities of drivers’ efforts and contractibility to affect drivers’ decision, and values of these parameters in both countries are discussed qualitatively and found to be consistent with the aforementioned characteristics.

This study develops an integrated approach combining data envelopment analysis (DEA) and structural equation modeling (SEM) for estimating the working capital management (WCM) efficiency and evaluating the effects of diverse exogenous variables on the WCM efficiency and firms' performance.

DEA is applied for deriving WCM efficiency for 212 Indian manufacturing firms over a period from 2008 to 2019. Also, the effect of human capital (HC), structural capital (SC), cost of external financing (CEF), interest coverage (IC), leverage (LEV), net fixed asset ratio (NFA), asset turnover ratio (ATR) and productivity (PRD) on the WCM efficiency and firms' performance is examined using SEM.

The average mean efficiency scores ranging from 0.623 to 0.654 highlight the firms operating at around 60% of WCM efficiency only, which is a major concern for Indian manufacturing firms. Further, IC, LEV, NFA, ATR revealed direct effect on the WCM efficiency as well as indirect effect on firms' performance, whereas CEF had only a direct effect on WCM efficiency. HC, SC and PRD had no effects on WCM efficiency and firms' performance.

The findings offer vital insights in guiding policy decisions for Indian manufacturing firms.

This study is the first to identify the endogenous nature of the relationship of HC, SC, CEF, IC altogether with firms' performance, compounded by the WCM efficiency, by applying a comprehensive methodology of DEA and SEM and provides an efficiency performance model for better decision-making.

The purpose of this paper is to outline a set of propositions for the Greek business sector concerning the value of strategically adopting a responsible business behaviour. The recent economic downturn of the Greek economy stresses the need for redefining current business models, attitudes and practices.

The authors draw from prior literature on strategic corporate responsibility and build their arguments on the value of social responsibility as an important component of an exit strategy from the domestic economic crisis.

Promoting the social responsibility of business could yield win–win opportunities for Greek firms and have a positive effect on the regeneration of the national economy’s dynamics. Connecting the well-established strategic CSR literature with the specific handicaps of an economy under pressure, we point out that the current deep crisis can be alleviated by regaining the trustworthiness, supporting the competitiveness potential and enhancing the extroversion of the Greek economy.

Strategic options from which policymakers and managers can endorse the development of a CSR agenda as an exit strategy component are set forth. Such practical implications pertain to the creation of an enabling environment for strategic CSR implementation, an emphasis on CSR-related amelioration of competitiveness parameters and a redefinition of market orientation of domestic firms under the scope of socially responsible business behaviour.

An economic–business environment under extreme pressure is discussed; problems relevant to the Greek case are outlined while a new approach in the way of doing business is proposed.

Gulf Bank’s service excellence “scorecard” was developed to support the Bank’s delivery of superior service in its market sector. The “scorecard” provides focus for a “service excellence” program, setting standards and measuring performance against customer focused objectives. The approach identified the “drivers” of customer satisfaction, related these to the Bank’s service delivery channels, set performance standards, and implemented measurement and reporting systems embracing external customer feedback and internal process measurements. Performance was measured against 16 key “drivers” of customer satisfaction identified independently by the local industry institute and related to the Bank’s delivery channels (branches, ATMs, telephone, Internet). Key measures were: customer satisfaction, complaints, comments and attrition, plus internal process delivery performance for critical products (consumer loans and credit card services). Reports were produced weekly and monthly with “drill downs” from bank to individual branch and/or employee levels. Reports are reviewed by management from chairman down to branch manager level. Results are incorporated in business KPIs and have become factors in employee incentive schemes. The approach adopted by the bank demonstrated that a practical, comprehensive service quality management system could be implemented and used to drive service improvement. The approach can be adopted by other banks and financial institutions and adapted to the needs of other service industries. The process implemented by Gulf Bank is believed to be unique in the Kuwait banking community and has scope for application in many similar environments outside the local area.

This paper aims to examine empirically the relationships among industry environment, diversification motivations and corporate performance for a sample of Taiwanese automobile enterprises.

A 55‐item survey questionnaire was developed to obtain the responses from companies in the automobile industry in Taiwan. Independent sample t‐test and χ² tests were employed to confirm the homogeneity between the respondents and non‐respondents by firm's characteristics, including by industry, number of employees, and capital.

The results suggest that industry environment has positive and significant impact on diversification motivations, and has positive but not significant impact on corporate performance. Diversification motivations has positive and significant impact on corporate performance. The results also indicate that firms of higher capital amounts have greater influence on diversification motivations and corporate performance, firms of publicly listed have greater influence on industry environment, diversification motivations and corporate performance and firms of higher degree of diversification have greater influence on diversification motivations only.

Several limitations exist in this study. This study adopts the cross‐sectional research design and examines firms at one point time and because of the constraints of time and data availability, longitudinal research was not viable in this study. Also the amount of variation for some regression models is low.

The paper's results not only provide researchers with a theoretical basis for further research, but also provide top management teams with important data when engaging in diversification.

The paper aims to study car assembly line, to show its productivity rate, and to derive a mathematical model for the productivity rate of the assembly line segmented into sections with embedded buffers.

The paper performs productivity calculations based on data obtained from the assembly processes of a car and shows the maximum productivity of the assembly line. The equations of the assembly line productivity, the optimal number of assembly stations, and the necessary number of the assembly line's sections with buffers are derived via the criterion of maximum productivity.

The paper provides the productivity diagram of the assembly line that illustrates various measures of productivity, one that depends on the number of assembly stations, the number of sections in the line, and the capacity of the buffers. The diagram is based on the proposed mathematical equations for the productivity of the assembly line as a function of the assembly technology, number of stations, number of sections, and the capacity of the buffer.

Solutions towards increasing the productivity of the assembly line are given based on the results of the study and analysis of the assembly processes in real industrial environments.

The paper includes the equation for the productivity of the assembly line, which is segmented into sections with limited capacity of the buffers, thereby enabling the calculation of its maximum productivity and the optimal number of assembly stations.

The paper presents an analysis of productivity and a mathematical model for calculating the productivity of the assembly line, which is segmented into sections with embedded buffers of limited capacity. The initial results of the research have been obtained from a real industrial environment.