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Product design is an essential aspect of the process of new product development and innovation, the efficiency of which depends on the existence of some kind of management. However, there is no generally accepted agreement as to exactly what activities this management involves, nor any analyses of the most suitable context for it to develop in or of the relationships that link these activities with performance. In this paper, we study product design management in depth and examine in what way and in which contexts it contributes to an improvement in performance. In order to do so, we carried out a case study of four companies from the Spanish ceramic tile sector that also revealed the activities of an efficient product design management. These were divided into two phases of the product design process: the analytical‐conceptual and the technical‐creative phases.

Bayesian approaches have been widely applied in construction management (CM) research due to their capacity to deal with uncertain and complicated problems. However, to date, there has been no systematic review of applications of Bayesian approaches in existing CM studies. This paper systematically reviews applications of Bayesian approaches in CM research and provides insights into potential benefits of this technique for driving innovation and productivity in the construction industry.

A total of 148 articles were retrieved for systematic review through two literature selection rounds.

Bayesian approaches have been widely applied to safety management and risk management. The Bayesian network (BN) was the most frequently employed Bayesian method. Elicitation from expert knowledge and case studies were the primary methods for BN development and validation, respectively. Prediction was the most popular type of reasoning with BNs. Research limitations in existing studies mainly related to not fully realizing the potential of Bayesian approaches in CM functional areas, over-reliance on expert knowledge for BN model development and lacking guides on BN model validation, together with pertinent recommendations for future research.

This systematic review contributes to providing a comprehensive understanding of the application of Bayesian approaches in CM research and highlights implications for future research and practice.

In continuous improvement (CI) projects, cause-and-effect diagrams are used to qualitatively express the relationship between a given problem and its root causes. However, when data collection activities are limited, and advanced statistical analyses are not possible, practitioners need to understand causal relationships. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

In this research, the authors present a framework that combines cause-and-effect diagrams with Bayesian belief networks (BBNs) to estimate causal relationships in instances where formal data collection/analysis activities are too costly or impractical. Specifically, the authors use cause-and-effect diagrams to create causal networks, and leverage elicitation methods to estimate the likelihood of risk scenarios by means of computer-based simulation.

This framework enables CI practitioners to leverage qualitative data and expertise to conduct in-depth statistical analysis in the event that data collection activities cannot be fully executed. Furthermore, this allows CI practitioners to identify critical root causes of a given problem under investigation before generating solutions.

This is the first framework that translates qualitative insights from a cause-and-effect diagram into a closed-form relationship between inputs and outputs by means of BBN models, simulation and regression.

The purpose of this paper is to report on the findings of a research project into strategic planning and design in the service sector sponsored by the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA) and supported by the Design Council into Design for Accounting.

The research used a mail survey questionnaire to gain information on design and strategic issues.

The findings are that the majority of medium‐sized service enterprises do not have a design function or use design. For those that do use design, the majority see design as very important: the benefits of design relate to the brand image of both the organisation and the services provided, closely followed by increased profits. Design has been used in the past to add value and improve quality, while innovation has been and will in the future be the main strategic area to concentrate on. Key strategic activities in the past have been adding new customers, whereas in the future the key strategic activities will be to understand customer needs.

The findings of the paper are important because they shed light on the importance of design and the benefits of design in the service sector, the service design strategies responsible for current performance, how the performance of service sector medium‐sized enterprises is assessed in terms of financial, market and service supply criteria, how service sector medium‐sized enterprises have reached their current status and how they intend to progress in the future, and the organisational, service supply and market factors employed in the past and how these might change in the future.

Investigates the relative effects of organizational and managerial factors on the firm′s propensity to acquire new technology through licensing from foreign non‐affiliated companies. Aims to contribute to the literature on the role of international licensing in the firm′s technology strategy by examining both licensee and non‐licensee firms. Finds that the two sets of factors make different but complementary contributions to the firm′s propensity to licence‐in foreign technology, with the managerial factors having far greater impact than the organizational factors. In addition, the individual factors have significantly different effects on the propensity to adopt licensing by licensee and non‐licensee firms in the sample. The results suggest that international licensors who look at both sets of factors in screening and selecting prospective licensees are more likely to be successful than those who look at one set of factors alone.

There is no general theory of public enterprise, and the miscellany of separate theorizations on the subject has created a conceptual quagmire. Examines the rather confusing state of the research on public enterprise performance and behaviour. Contrary to conventional wisdom, it seems that in certain circumstances (as in the case of Singapore) public enterprise can be quite efficient, as well as an effective form of national competition.

There is no general theory of public enterprise (PE), and the miscellany of separate theorizations on the subject has created a conceptual quagmire. Advances some hypotheses gleaned from the literature on the PE concerning confusion in the PE′s objective function, investment tendencies and cost of capital, “fairness” as international competitors, influence of the societal environment, and other major theoretical issues. Hypotheses are modified to accommodate the Singapore experience with PEs. Singapore represents a rare phenomenon – a case of a successful PE system.

In this paper, the main objective will be to discuss the factors which can influence the usage of risk reducing strategies found in the literature over the past 30 years. Some of the factors which have relatively consistent effects include age, socio‐economic group, education while other factors show complex effect e.g. self‐confidence, loss‐type and product risk. On the whole, the literature on risk reduction and how it is affected is unable to provide would‐be researchers with clear guidance for questionnaire construction and research design.

The fund selection process of investors in a mutual fund needs to be understood for designing better marketing strategies. Knowledge and perception about the mutual funds can affect investor’s behaviour towards information search and selection criteria during the decision process. Therefore, this study aims to examine Indian mutual fund investors under the framework of Theory of Planned Behaviour and consumer’s behaviour model.

The data have been collected from mutual fund investors in the National Capital Region–Delhi, India, through structured questionnaire. The collected data were examined with relevant statistical tools.

Knowledge and perception affect information search behaviour of the investor. Investors having better knowledge of mutual funds access impersonal sources of information and performance of fund affects their choice, whereas investors having lesser knowledge of mutual fund take advice of experts and select funds based on fund characteristics. Investors with better return perception for mutual funds ignore performance as selection criteria, whereas investors having poor risk perception tend to reduce their bias by accessing personal sources of information. Education and income of investor affect knowledge and perception of mutual funds.

The financial advisor-driven investors ignore performance as selection criteria and could lead to dissatisfaction later. Therefore, to make the industry investor driven, mutual funds need to focus on improving the knowledge of investors.

This paper shows the unique effect of knowledge and perception on information search behaviour of investors towards mutual funds. The knowledgeable investor selects mutual funds by understanding all risks and benefits.