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Each year, the US defense industry outsources nearly $400 bn of domestic goods and services through competitive bids. These procurement activities are quite often complex and specialized in nature because of a highly regulated federal acquisition contracting environment. Ongoing calls to improve supplier management and drive innovation in the defense industry offers an opportunity to adopt Early Supplier Integration (ESI) initiatives that have proven successful in the private sector. This paper identifies critical ESI activities and acquisition practices that the defense industry should adopt to ensure enhanced effectiveness in new product development.

Leveraging a conceptual ESI model derived from the research, an in-depth case study of 12 product development projects from a major defense contractor was performed. In the context of project performance, critical ESI activities and moderating effects were assessed.

Three key ESI activities have the greatest impact on aggregate project performance: system design involvement, design adjustment opportunities and design for manufacturability/assembly/testability involvement. Use of formal supplier agreements also significantly impacts project performance during the development phase. In addition, project complexity and product team maturity were identified as environment moderators; higher complexity projects tended to negatively moderate the impact of ESI upon performance, and higher team maturity levels tended to positively moderate the impact of ESI upon performance.

The results provide a sound framework for empirical validation through future quantitative studies and defense industry analyses. In addition, insights and recommendations for interpretation and adaptation of federal acquisition regulations to allow increased utilization of ESI within the defense industry are substantiated.

This paper aims to seek answers to the question: What are the relevant factors that allow not-for-profit innovation networks to successfully transition new technologies from proof-of-concept to commercialisation?

This question is examined using the knowledge-based view and network orchestration theory. Data are collected from 35 interviews with managers and engineers working within seven centres that comprise the High Value Manufacturing Catapult (HVMC). These centres constitute a not-for-profit innovation network where suppliers, customers and competitors collaborate to help transition new technologies across the “Valley of Death” (the gap between establishing a proof of concept and commercialisation).

Network orchestration theory suggests that a hub firm facilitates the exchange of knowledge amongst network members (knowledge mobility), to enable these members to profit from innovation (innovation appropriability). The hub firm ensures positive network growth, and also allows for the entry and exit of network members (network stability). This study of not-for-profit innovation networks suggests the role of a network orchestrator is to help ensure that intellectual property becomes a public resource that enhances the productivity of the domestic economy. The authors observed how network stability was achieved by the HVMC's seven centres employing a loosely-coupled hybrid network configuration. This configuration however ensured that new technology development teams, comprised of suppliers, customers and competitors, remained tightly-coupled to enable co-development of innovative technologies. Matching internal technical and sectoral expertise with complementary experience from network members allowed knowledge to flow across organisational boundaries and throughout the network. Matrix organisational structures and distributed decision-making authority created opportunities for knowledge integration to occur. Actively moving individuals and teams between centres also helped to diffuse knowledge to network members, while regular meetings between senior management ensured network coordination and removed resource redundancies.

The study contributes to knowledge-based theory by moving beyond existing understanding of knowledge integration in firms, and identified how knowledge is exchanged and aggregated within not-for-profit innovation networks. The findings contribute to network orchestration theory by challenging the notion that network orchestrators should enact and enforce appropriability regimes (patents, licences, copyrights) to allow members to profit from innovations. Instead, the authors find that not-for-profit innovation networks can overcome the frictions that appropriability regimes often create when exchanging knowledge during new technology development. This is achieved by pre-defining the terms of network membership/partnership and setting out clear pathways for innovation scaling, which embodies newly generated intellectual property as a public resource. The findings inform a framework that is useful for policy makers, academics and managers interested in using not-for-profit networks to transition new technologies across the Valley of Death.

The Deming management method, which encompasses the breadth of W. Edwards Deming's approach to quality management, has had significant impact on the practice and scholarship of quality management. In this paper we present a scholarly introspection and discussion on scientific research related to the Deming management method, the contributions of such research to theory development in quality management, and future research directions to pursue in order to continue to advance scientific knowledge in quality management. In doing so, we traced the historical development of the Deming management method. We present and discuss two streams of research related to the Deming management method, namely the concept of profound knowledge and the Deming‐based theory of TQM. We also highlight several opportunities for future research that would advance theory development in the TQM discipline – opportunities anchored by the imperative for confirmatory research that requires proper operationalization and primary data, and the plausibility of theory refinement and extension through the specification of new relationships and the inclusion of moderators and mediators.

This preliminary study aims to investigate and describe aggression-supportive normative beliefs among patients of a high-secure hospital.

Therapy data from a sample of high-secure forensic hospital patients (N = 11) who had participated in Life Minus Violence-Enhanced, a long-term violence therapy, was examined using interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA). During therapy, cognitions linked to past incidences of aggression were explored using aggression choice chains.

IPA was applied to data generated through this process to examine the presence and nature of normative beliefs reported, identifying seven themes: rules for aggressive behaviour; use of violence to obtain revenge; processing emotions with violence; surviving in a threatening world; do not become a victim; using violence to maintain status; and prosocial beliefs.

Findings demonstrate that forensic patients have specific aggression-supportive normative beliefs, which may be malleable. Limitations and implications are discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a model that enables a company to select the supply chain strategy based on risk probability p (measure of how likely/often a detrimental event occurs) and risk impact i (expression of the significance of a loss when that event occurs).

This paper discusses four supply chain strategies: agility, robustness, resilience and rigidity. Mathematical models are used for the strategies' cost functions, which reveal optimal solutions and break‐even points in dependence of p and i.

This paper proposes that resilience is appropriate in the case of high supply chain risk probability and impact, and rigidity if both values are low. When only risk impact is low, robustness is optimal, whereas agility is optimal when only risk probability is low.

This research extends existing models for selecting the appropriate supply chain strategy.

Knowledge of the interplay between the strategies' cost functions and risk probability and risk impact is vital for companies. This may encourage managers to become more familiar with their strategy costs and supply chain risks.

To the author's knowledge, no corresponding model exists so far that links risk impact and risk probability to the four supply chain strategies.

Risk is primarily managed by developing the right strategies. Effective alignment of lean and agile strategies is always challenging for practitioners to create firm’s competitiveness. The purpose of this study is to comprehend the behavior of these fundamental supply chain (SC) strategies by using the Triple-A framework.

Sample data is collected from 257 SC professionals serving in manufacturing firms through a self-administered structured questionnaire. The statistical technique used to perform hypotheses testing is structural equation modeling.

This study discloses a few critical attributes of lean and agile strategies while attempting to create strategic alignment and gain maximum benefits out of it. One of the key findings is that a lean strategy finds it challenging to create adaptability. However, better alignment among the market priorities and operational capabilities may improve risk management capabilities.

This study posits various vital insights for strategy-makers. For instance, it is advised to the operations managers that lean resources are usually never capable of adopting change but can be aligned with the market changes to create a SC risk management capability for the firm.

This is an original research with various useful insights for SC operations strategy-makers and academic researchers as it reveals a key empirical evidence of past vital concepts.

The purpose of this paper is to further advance an existing supplier evaluation model for the purpose of identifying those supplier relations which predominantly threaten or worsen a company's performance. A defined basic set of parameters to determine complexity facilitates the identification of critical locations within a supply network (SN) under certain business conditions.

This paper is based on a structured literature review in scientific periodicals in logistics/supply chain management between 2000 and 2009. Articles are analysed based on a structured framework and the identified complexity parameters are operationalised using quantitative and summable measures. The conceptual model is applied within a multiple case study in the Austrian agricultural industry.

This paper illustrates how complexity in SNs can be operationalised in a company‐specific configuration in order to achieve concrete managerial recommendations. Hence, the model allows evaluating SN‐partners based on selected parameters to determine the contribution of a single partner to the overall complexity.

Due to the literature review executed and the case study approach chosen, the research may lack generalisability. Therefore, continued validation by means of implementing a greater amount of use cases in other companies and industries is advisable.

Applying the model, a company is able to determine tier‐1 to tier‐n suppliers which are predominantly affecting its business from a complexity perspective.

Unlike typical current complexity evaluation approaches, the proposed model respects rapid and continuous applicability, profound conceptualisation and practical feasibility.

Maintaining and improving productivity of product design and engineering processes has been a paramount challenge for design-driven companies, which are characterised a high degree of development of products and processes in order to meet particular customer requirements. Literature on this issue is fragmented and dispersed and a concise and systematic overview is lacking. Hence, it remains unclear, which methods are applicable for design-driven companies to improve the productivity of limitedly available engineering resources (a challenge companies and nations face currently). The purpose of this paper is to develop such a systematic overview.

An unusual approach was utilised by combining the outcomes from a systematic literature review and the results of a Delphi study. From both research approaches complementary and overlapping methods for improving the productivity of product design and engineering processes could be drawn.

The unique systematic overview presents 27 methods to increase the productivity, effectiveness and efficiency of product design and engineering processes of design-driven companies. Moreover, the study finds that methods for improving effectiveness are preferred over methods for improving efficiency and that limitations with regard to the availability of resources are often not considered.

During the development of the systematic overview, a lack of empirical evidence to assess the actual impact of productivity improvement methods was discovered. This shortcoming demonstrates the need for more conceptual and empirical work in this domain. More studies are needed to test and confirm the usefulness of the proposed methods.

Nevertheless, design-driven companies, which struggle to increase the productivity of their product design and engineering processes, can systematically select improvement methods from the overview according to their impact on productivity, effectiveness and efficiency. However, companies should keep in mind, whether effectiveness of product design and engineering can really be increased without considering limitations in engineering resources.

Therefore, the systematic overview provides a valuable map of the unexplored territory of productivity improvement methods for product design and engineering for both practitioners and researchers. For the latter ones, it creates directions for empirical investigations in order to explore and to compare methods for the improvement of productivity of product design and engineering processes.

The purpose of this paper is to understand how personal relationships influence behavior within a supply-chain context.

This research employs a qualitative methodology that allows for a rich assessment of how buyers and suppliers of logistics services interact within the context of personal relationships (e.g. friendships), that are themselves embedded within interfirm relationships. Based on a grounded theory approach, a model is developed describing how and why personal relationships are important for supply-chain managers to consider when cultivating interfirm connections.

The findings reveal how managers act/interact within the context of personal relationships, as well as the outcomes/benefits associated with the development of personal relationships.

This study uses qualitative interviews to generate theory. The generalizability of the findings will have to be empirically examined in future research.

Managers can use the findings to understand explicitly what types of benefits personal relationships can yield. Further, this study presents to managers the specific actions that buyers and suppliers of logistics services engage in, when developing a personal relationship, in order to facilitate the generation of positive business outcomes.

A notable weakness in the supply-chain relationship literature is the unfulfilled need for research examining interfirm relationships at a micro/individual level, rather than the traditionally adopted firm-to-firm view, in order to account for the social/relational elements of firm-level relationships. This paper addresses that gap by exploring personal relationships within supply chains.