Search results

This paper aims to investigate the impact of monitoring and mentoring strategies on sustainability diffusion within supply networks through focal companies and how suppliers engage in implementing these strategies.

The paper reports on three in-depth case studies conducted with focal companies and their suppliers. An interaction approach was adopted to guide the analysis of focal companies’ strategies for implementing and diffusing sustainability in supply networks.

The monitoring strategy impacts sustainability diffusion at the dyadic level, while the mentoring strategy is a prerequisite for the diffusion of sustainability at the supply network level. The findings suggest that coupling monitoring with mentoring can lead to diffusion beyond first-tier suppliers. Interaction intensity, supplier proactiveness and mindset change facilitate sustainability diffusion in supply networks.

The authors suggest more research be conducted on specific practices within monitoring and mentoring, as some of these imply very different levels of commitment and interaction.

The paper suggests that in the future, companies will be increasingly called upon to adopt cooperative initiatives to enable the diffusion of sustainability in supply networks.

The contribution of the paper lies in its identification of the impacts of monitoring and mentoring strategies on the diffusion of sustainability in networks, revealing different supplier engagement in these strategies, which may foster or hinder sustainability diffusion.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relational capabilities developed by small and medium‐sized suppliers in relationships with larger customers and to explore the influences of these relational capabilities on value co‐creation and innovation.

The paper presents a framework to evaluate the types of relational capabilities developed by small and medium‐sized suppliers that enable them to manage in relationships with larger customers in the context of changing relationship requirements in the organic food sector. The methodology employed involves in‐depth case studies of small and medium‐sized UK organic food suppliers working in relationships with large retail supermarket customers.

The findings suggest that the identified set of relational capabilities may be employed by small and medium‐sized suppliers to enable them to inform and support innovation and the implementation of initiatives to create value in the eyes of their current and potential customers and concomitantly enhance their position as preferred suppliers.

The findings were based on a small number of case studies of small UK organic food suppliers. Therefore, there is scope for future studies to explore the issues addressed in the paper in wider relationship, network and country settings.

The research is among the first to offer a conceptual framework and an empirical contribution linking relational capabilities, value co‐creation and innovation in small and medium‐sized suppliers.

The case of the global freight forwarding industry is one example where networks of small‐ to medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) are playing an increasingly important role. Internationalisation opportunities and competitive advantages may be obtained by SMEs in pooling their resources and exchanging information and expertise. This empirical case study examines horizontal collaboration between SMEs that consider their other network members, first and foremost, as competitors.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the development and application of a theoretical framework to examine the connections between different types of suppliers, their capabilities and opportunities in customer relationships, and the illustration of these connections through the findings from empirical case studies of small and medium‐sized suppliers in the metal industry in Denmark.

Multiple case studies involving 17 small and medium‐sized suppliers within the Danish metal industry were undertaken.

By focusing on the development of capabilities that are “valuable” to customers in specific types of supply, small and medium‐sized suppliers may improve their responses to opportunities in their customer relationships.

Further investigation is needed on the longer‐term impacts of valuable capabilities on opportunity enactment by suppliers, and the examination of key issues arising from these findings across different industries and countries.

Small and medium‐sized suppliers, their customers and government agencies involved with suppliers should advocate and actively support the development of valuable capabilities to enhance the effectiveness of suppliers' relationship and network strategies and their potential to seize opportunities.

This study highlights that different types of suppliers require different types of current and future valuable capabilities to seize opportunities and sustain current customers or develop new customer relationships.

The purpose of this research paper is to examine the role of focal suppliers in strategic networks for internationalisation from the perspectives of small and medium‐sized Italian and Thai silk suppliers.

Multiple case studies of small and medium‐sized suppliers within the silk industries of Italy and Thailand were undertaken. In total, seventeen interviews and three observations were conducted with directors or managers of silk suppliers and a range of government agencies, associations and institutes involved with the silk industry, to identify significant current issues within the sector. Conceptually clustered and role ordered matrices were used as coding frameworks to reduce, structure and analyse the data.

Silk suppliers' networks may be co‐ordinated by a focal supplier that assumes the role of strategic leader. The involvement of a focal and strategically‐focused supplier may strengthen and integrate the resources and capabilities of silk suppliers in their networks and enable them to improve their international network development and positioning.

Further investigation is needed on the details of specific roles of focal suppliers in strategic networks.

Silk suppliers, their customers and government agencies involved with silk suppliers should: advocate and actively support the development of focal suppliers in their networks to enhance the effectiveness of their internationalisation process and strategy.

There tends to be a consensus in the literature about the influence of focal customers and larger organisations in strategic networks. This study highlights how small and medium‐sized silk suppliers adopt the roles attributed to focal firms and gain positioning advantages for themselves and other suppliers in their network.

Within the Ayrshire knitwear industry in Scotland, a group of small‐ and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) have formed a network with the purpose of developing group branded products for export markets. The initiative was instigated by the Ayrshire Textile Group (ATG), which was created in 1991 as a partnership between Enterprise Ayrshire, a government funded body, and the local textile industry. This paper briefly reviews the existing literature describing the internationalisation process of firms and discusses why SMEs may consider networks as a means to developing international markets. The case study of the ATG empirically illustrates how network relationships may facilitate foreign market development by SMEs, the role of enterprise companies in this process, and the problems that SMEs are likely to face in the process. The paper concludes with a discussion of future directions of the research.

The purpose of this paper is to empirically examine the influence of the internet on the internationalisation process and international customer relationship interactions of UK manufacturing small to medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs). The paper is positioned at the interface of the literature on international entrepreneurship and the internet.

The paper discusses the findings from multiple case studies of ten UK manufacturing SMEs from a variety of UK sectors, producing high‐, medium‐ and low‐tech offerings. In‐depth interviews with directors or managers of the SMEs were conducted. Individual and cross‐case analysis was carried out using coding frameworks to reduce and analyse the data and capture patterns in the findings.

The findings reveal how the influence of the internet in the internationalisation process and international customer relationship interactions differed in the high‐, medium‐or low‐tech SME categories. The influence of the internet differed across three main dimensions: the way in which the SMEs invested in and used different internet applications for internationalisation and customer relationship support, the SMEs' perceptions of the internet as a tool to support communication with international customers; the SMEs' reliance on more personal and interactive forms of contact with international customers.

The results demonstrate that the level of technological advancement of an SME's offerings has an important bearing on how these firms adopt the internet in their internationalisation process and gain advantages in their international customer interactions. The managerial implications of the study are relevant for manufacturing SMEs, their customers and government agencies involved with SMEs.

This research is amongst the first empirical contributions to examine the themes of the internet, internationalisation and international customer interactions in UK manufacturing SMEs and to highlight the importance of the level of technological advancement of an SME's offerings in distinguishing the ways in which the internet is used by entrepreneurial small firms in their internationalisation process.

It is imperative to offer a new perspective of Entrepreneurial Growth Intention (EGI) that draws directly upon the capability approach. The aim of this study is to investigate the role of capabilities in the context of EGI in the floriculture industry in Sri Lanka.

The study was exploratory and is mainly qualitative in nature. In-depth interviews were carried out with the owners of farms who possess experience in floriculture commercial cultivation in Sri Lanka.

The results emerged that there are different perspectives among farm owners regarding EGI. Drawing attention on the stories of our participants and making a three-phase analysis, we identified 31 key actions denoted by the farm owners. This work then suggests that the seven capabilities might be fruitfully framed around EGI.

As the results stress the role of capabilities in the formation of an entrepreneur's growth intention is vital. Therefore, more targeted measures should be drawn to build fair and supportive facilities to obtain advanced knowledge, to familiarise with the emergence of technology and to attain professional services specifically in financial literacy.

The question of what factors influence EGI at the farm level is still largely unexplored as less is known about the effect of capabilities on EGI. The study expands the current debates on EGI and institutional environment, which allows the mapping out of capability development.

The aviation industry recognised the significance of human error in accidents in the 1970s, and has been instrumental in the development of special training, designed to reduce error and increase the effectiveness of flight crews. These crew resource management (CRM) programmes focus on “non‐technical skills” critical for enhanced operational performance, such as leadership, situation awareness, decision making, team work and communication. More recently CRM has been adopted by other “high reliability” team environments including anaesthesiology, air traffic control, the Merchant Navy, the nuclear power industry, aviation maintenance, and the offshore oil industry. This review paper describes the basic principles of crew resource management, then outlines recent developments in aviation and other high reliability work environments.