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The purpose of this paper is to identify the operational capabilities in an emerging country, and to analyze the trade-off effect between the quality capability and the cost capability.

The empirical data were drawn from 160 firms in Brazil. Scales were validated using the Q-sort method and confirmatory factor analysis. Different techniques were adopted to reduce common method variance. Data were analyzed using multiple line regression.

The results showed that quality has a positive relationship with delivery, flexibility, innovation and sustainability capabilities. However, it was not possible to observe a positive relationship between quality and cost that confirmed the presence of a trade-off between these two capabilities.

An important practical contribution of this study is that it brings a new perspective to the relationship between quality and cost. Although quality is an important capability for the firm, emerging country managers need to understand that its implementation will take time and money; quality does not indicate an immediate reduction in cost.

This study helps expand research into operational capabilities in lesser-developed countries, such as Brazil. Most of the research on operational capabilities is conducted in industrialized countries. The paper also discusses the trade-off between the quality capability and cost capability. The results show that quality does not always lead to a reduction in cost.

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.

This paper aims to systematically review the literature on quality management in agri-food supply chains (SCs) and propose an integrated conceptual framework.

A systematic literature review that analyses 93 papers in peer-reviewed academic journals published from 1996 to November 2021 is conducted. A conceptual model is advanced.

Based on a hierarchy of capabilities perspective, the authors develop an integrated conceptual framework in which SC quality (SCQ) management practices promote three levels of SC dynamic capabilities, which in turn lead to agri-food SCQ performance.

The authors propose a hierarchy of capabilities perspective of quality management in agri-food SCs and develop a conceptual framework. Furthermore, a number of propositions based on dynamic capabilities and the review findings are provided. Four future research directions are presented.

This paper aims to examine how information sharing affects cash flow performance through the competitive capabilities of low cost or product quality.

In total, 159 survey responses were collected from Norwegian manufacturing firms in 2018. Structural equation modelling (SEM) was used to analyse the data collected.

The low-cost competitive capability was found to positively mediate the effect of information sharing on cash flow performance. However, product quality competitive capability did not have a significant mediating effect between information sharing and cash flow performance. Rather, customer satisfaction fully mediated the relationship between product quality, capability and cash flow performance. The empirical results not only support how the competitive capabilities can be developed through information sharing but also illustrate that the competitive capabilities affect cash flow performance through different mediating routes.

While information sharing and competitive capabilities have been studied previously with regard to financial performance, less emphasis has been placed on how customer satisfaction might explain the mediated relationship between product quality, competitive capability and financial performance. In addition, financial performance is measured by the proxy of cash flow. The use of cash flow as a performance measure leads to a more forward-looking financial performance measure. This is especially appropriate for non-listed firms.

Cumulative capability models are dominating frameworks explaining how manufacturing organizations gain their performance capabilities, such as quality, delivery, flexibility and cost. When innovation capabilities are excluded from the framework, the models are incapable of explaining how companies sustain substantive capabilities in a changing environment. Responding to this gap, the purpose of this paper is to propose and test a “sand cone” cumulative capability model that includes the innovation competitive performance alongside the competitive performance of quality, delivery flexibility and cost.

Two competing cumulative models were proposed. The extended cumulative capability model hypothesizes the development of innovation in sequence with other competitive performance dimensions. The affected with innovation cumulative model hypothesizes innovation performance as a predecessor of other performance dimensions. The models were tested using a multimethod approach on a representative sample of 500 manufacturing companies. An analysis of correlations among competitive performance, frequencies of plants following prescribed sequences, fit statistics of covariance-based structural equation modeling and analysis of strength and statistical significance of path coefficients enabled us to select a model that best represents the collected data.

The findings reveal that innovation competitive performance operates as a predecessor of quality, delivery, flexibility and cost and is developed in relation to these performance dimensions. The modified model also provides a theoretical explanation of how innovation performance helps to sustain reliable production systems that can perform consistently over time within a tolerable range of quality, delivery, flexibility and cost performance.

The results are significant for practitioners, especially for companies that are operating in volatile environments because the results provide insight on how to develop innovation competitive performance in relation to quality, delivery, flexibility and cost performance.

This study extends the cumulative capability models with innovation competitive performance. It advances the contingency approach on cumulative capability models.

Big data marketing analytics (BDMA) has been discovered to be a key contributing factor to developing necessary marketing capabilities. This research aims to investigate the impact of the technology and information quality of BDMA on the critical marketing capabilities by differentiating between firms with low and high perceived market performance.

The responses were collected from marketing professionals familiar with BDMA in North America (N = 236). The analysis was done with partial least squares-structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM).

The results indicated positive and significant relationships between the information and technology quality as exogenous constructs and the endogenous constructs of the marketing capabilities of marketing planning, implementation and customer relationship management (CRM) with mainly moderate effect sizes. Differences in the path coefficients in the structural model were detected between firms with low and high perceived market performance.

This research indicates the critical role of technology and information quality in developing marketing capabilities. The study discovered heterogeneity in the sample population when using the low and high perceived market performance as the source of potential heterogeneity, the presence of which would likely cause a threat to the validity of the results in case heterogeneity is not considered. Thus, this research builds on previous research by considering this issue.

The paper aims to investigate the relationship between supply chain quality management (SCQM) practices and organisational performance as well as the role of knowledge transfer (KT) and SCQM capabilities in mediating the SCQM practices–organisational performance relationship. Precisely, this study tried to examine how effective are SCQM practices in enhancing SCQM capabilities, KT processes and to illuminate the role both of SCQM capabilities and KT processes in improving a firm’s innovation and operational performance (OP).

This paper applied a quantitative method in which data were collected from a survey with 152 firms functioning in the most pollutant manufacturing sectors (i.e. food, construction, chemical and pharmaceutical sectors) in Palestine. The data analysis was conducted using the partial least squares structural equation modelling.

This paper provides empirical insights into how to enhance organisational performance via SCQM capabilities and KT. In addition, this study contributes to the conceptualisation of SCQM, involving quality combination capability, supply chain responsiveness capability, quality knowledge sharing capability and provides the managers the ability to train themselves regarding the SCQM with its implication.

Because of the chosen research approach, the research results may lack generalisability. Therefore, researchers are encouraged to test the proposed propositions further. Practical implications – this paper includes implications for the improvement of SCQM capabilities, the manufacturing organisations should concentrate on establishing modern information technology.

This paper includes implications for the improvement of SCQM capabilities, the manufacturing organisations should concentrate on establishing modern information technology.

This paper proposes a conceptual framework that tests the combined effect of SCQM practices, SCQM capabilities and KT on innovation and OP from a developing country perspective.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a model examining the effect of organizational capabilities over new product (NP) performance. Building on a literature review, the model proposes that organizational capabilities (i.e. technological, marketing mix, and customer‐relational capabilities) exert a direct effect over two dimensions of new product competitive advantage (i.e. new product quality and speed), which in turn exert a direct effect over new product customers and financial performance.

Based on a literature review, a structured questionnaire was developed as a primary data collection method. Questionnaires were distributed to a sample of 473 manufacturing organizations in Jordan, out of which 355 were returned and deemed valid for the analysis. Structural equation modeling was applied to examine the model and its related hypotheses.

Out of the three organizational capabilities, only marketing mix capabilities had a direct positive effect over both new product quality and speed to the market, while technological capabilities had no significant direct effect over both dimensions of new product competitive advantage. Customer‐relational capabilities had a direct effect over new product quality only. On the other hand, while new product quality exerted a positive direct effect over both NP financial and customer performance, new product speed to the market had a direct positive effect over NP customer performance only. Finally, NP customer performance exerted a positive direct effect over NP financial performance.

The fact that the paper is a single country study focusing on the manufacturing industry limits its generalization to other industries/contexts. Furthermore, the paper focuses on two dimensions of new product performance, i.e. customer performance and financial performance. Other dimensions of new product performance might add more insights to the effects new product competitive advantage exerts.

Managers must focus their efforts on developing marketing activities in a competitive manner so that they can introduce both quick and satisfactory new products. Hence, a special focus on marketing function is required. Not only traditional activities of marketing, but also generation, utilization, and management of customer information and knowledge are necessary to introduce competitive new products. Marketing function should be given the lead in the new product development (NPD) process. However, to avoid any rivalry between marketing, production, and R&D, top management needs to foster the marketing concept as a philosophy and to spread it across the organization.

The paper adds to the research on sources of new product competitive advantage in developing countries. It also underlines the need to focus on different dimensions of NP competitive advantage, rather than approaching it from a holistic perspective. The paper further underlines that organizations should focus on long‐term results of NPD, such as NP customer performance, rather than solely focusing on short‐term financial results.

This exploratory study aims to analyse the influence of organisational resources and capabilities on relationship quality and firm performance in the context of high-technology offshore outsourcing service vendors.

Using a qualitative case study design, data from four offshore business process and information technology outsourcing firms were analysed.

Findings highlight that resource dependence, cultural orientation and the vendor’s resources and capabilities strengthen relationship quality and affect firm performance.

The distinctive contribution of this study lies in identifying key organisational mechanisms that improve relationship quality and firm performance, as well as help to understand the adverse effects of ethnocentricity and power faced by vendors and subsidiaries within diverse intercultural contexts. Study limitations and future research directions, along with implications for theory and practice, are also discussed.

This study aims to investigate the effectiveness of integrated audit management and its impact on business sustainability for an emerging economy.

Drawing on the dynamic capability and contingency theory, the authors investigated the factors on integrated audit management implementation using a sample of 104 certified Malaysian manufacturing firms. The collected data has been analysed using the partial least squares through the structural equation modelling technique.

The findings have revealed that human resource capability, technological capability and quality capability have a robust influence on the importance of the internal audit process, which, in turn, leads to integrated audit management effectiveness towards the outcome of business sustainability. The results have also indicated the mediating effect of the internal audit process on the research model.

The contribution from the empirical findings will provide productive insights to help manufacturing firms devise an effective integrated internal audit management system to ensure business sustainability and increase competitiveness advantages for an emerging economy.