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Sourcing research to date has concentrated on manufacturing, primarily in the form of just‐in‐time purchasing systems. This study examines sourcing in an important service industry – hospitals. Hospital materials management integrates purchasing, inventory control and distribution. A prime vendor relationship, an agreement between a multi‐line distributor and a hospital, streamlines the purchasing process by reducing the number of vendors and paperwork for the buyer. An examination of 22 general hospitals in Georgia, USA, yielded preliminary evidence the prime vendor relationship led to better materials management performance. This article explores the potential advantages and disadvantages for hospital buyers and vendors and the implications for performance.

Describes the manufacturing strategy implications of a two‐industry study of manufacturing practices. A research team administered questionnaires to managers in the machine tools and textiles industries in China, Japan, Korea, the USA and Western Europe. Highlights of the results include the superior Japanese delivery speed and the extensive use of information systems in the USA. An overview of the relative industrial strengths of each country provides a setting to discuss manufacturing strategy. Each national industry is then classified according to the Hayes and Wheelwright stages of manufacturing competitiveness.

Global business frequently requires the expatriation and repatriation of managers and skilled workers. Previous research has focused on cultural and demographic factors that lead to success with this process. This study goes beyond the cultural and demographic issues to examine implications of operational and technology‐related factors, including use of standard practices, degree of technical sophistication of operations, and technical orientation of the employee. Our results indicate that the technical sophistication of operations abroad, use of standard practices at home, technical orientation of the individual, and increased responsibility and promotion all positively contribute to expatriate satisfaction. Repatriate satisfaction is primarily influenced by difficulty in finding a suitable position upon relocation home. The technical orientation of the individual, in turn, has important implications for repatriation success. This research identifies important new operational and technology‐related factors that should be considered by global firms in management of their internationally located operations.

Consensus building plays an important role in strategy formulation and implementation. Previous researchers have attempted to find a link between goal consensus among top management and organizational performance, mainly in manufacturing settings, with varying results. Few extant studies have examined goal consensus at the functional level. Aims to expand our knowledge of the goal consensus/performance relationship by focusing on the relationship between operations and marketing in the service setting. Attempts to identify the types of co‐ordination mechanisms that help achieve functional goal consensus between operations and marketing. Finds a positive relationship between goal consensus of the marketing and operations managers and performance based on return on equity and return on assets. Concludes that consensus is correlated with the use of process and programming co‐ordination mechanisms and not correlated with the use of interpersonal co‐ordination mechanisms.

Pursuing objectives despite limited internal resources and leveraging external resources despite non‐ownership are familiar hallmarks of entrepreneurial firms. Although outsourcing is the standard way for businesses to surmount these barriers, entrepreneurial firms often lack the resources to purchase outsourcing arrangements. The purpose of this paper is to shed light on how entrepreneurial firms can better procure and benefit from outsourcing arrangements.

The paper examines six entrepreneurial firms in a Shanghai business incubator as they undertook a variety of outsourcing arrangements. It utilizes an integrative framework based on transaction cost theory, resource dependency theory, and the resource‐based view. It then cross‐hatches those three theory bases with four outsourcing modes (full, partial, spinout, inter‐outsourcing) and case study methodology.

The paper's findings yield three novel propositions for strategic and ex ante entrepreneurial firm outsourcing activities. The propositions pertain to the exchange of non‐traditional resources, vendor‐buyer power differentials, and linkages between internal operations and external resources.

Entrepreneurial firms stand to benefit in particularly vital ways from outsourcing arrangements. Yet, they are often severely constrained with respect to resources. Such strong need combined with limited means is a peculiarly valuable setting but only a paucity of research exists. The original study targets this important setting.

As founders of First Interstate BancSystem, which held $8.6 billion in assets and had recently become a public company, and Padlock Ranch, which had over 11,000 head of cattle, the Scott family had to think carefully about business and family governance. Now entering its fifth generation, the family had over 80 shareholders across the US. In early 2016, the nine-member Scott Family Council (FC) and other family and business leaders considered the effectiveness of the Family Governance Leadership Development Initiative launched two years earlier. The initiative's aim was to ensure a pipeline of capable family leaders for the business boards, two foundation boards, and FC.

Seven family members had self-nominated for governance roles in mid-2015. As part of the development initiative, each was undergoing a leadership development process that included rigorous assessment and creation of a comprehensive development plan. As the nominees made their way through the process and other family members considered nominating themselves for future development, questions remained around several interrelated areas, including how to foster family engagement with governance roles while guarding against damaging competition among members; how to manage possible conflicts of interest around dual employee and governance roles; and how to extend the development process to governance for the foundations and FC. The FC considered how best to answer these and other questions, and whether the answers indicated the need to modify the fledgling initiative.

This case illustrates the challenges multigenerational family-owned enterprises face in developing governance leaders within the family. It serves as a good example of governance for a large group of cousins within a multienterprise portfolio. Students can learn and apply insights from this valuable illustration of family values, vision, and mission statement.

Labor management cooperation, and the adoption of high-performance work systems (HPWS), are central topics in recent industrial relations research, with much emphasis given to “best-practice” success stories. This paper uses a case study analysis, relying on conventional, and oral history interviews, to explore why managers, union leaders, and workers in two Maine paper mills rejected the cooperation and the HPWS model. It explores how local history and culture, regional factors like the dramatic International Paper (IP) strike in Jay, Maine, instability in industry labor relations, management turnover, and instability in corporate governance contributed to these two mills’ rejection of Scott Paper Corporation's “Jointness” initiative during the period from 1988 to 1995. The study argues that intra-management divisions blocked cooperation on the management side, and that the Jay strike created a “movement culture” among Maine's paper workers, who developed a class-conscious critique of HPWS as a tactic in class warfare being perpetrated by paper corporations.

Road policing is a key method used to improve driver compliance with road laws. However, the authors have a very limited understanding of the perceptions of young drivers regarding police enforcement of road laws. The paper aims to address this gap.

Within this study 238 young drivers from Queensland, Australia, aged 17-24 years (M=18, SD=1.54), with a provisional (intermediate) driver’s licence completed an online survey regarding their perceptions of police enforcement and their driver thrill-seeking tendencies. This study considered whether these factors influenced self-reported transient (e.g. traveling speed) and fixed (e.g. blood alcohol concentration) road violations by the young drivers.

The results indicate that being detected by police for a traffic offence, and the frequency with which they display P-plates on their vehicle to indicate their licence status, are associated with both self-reported transient and fixed rule violations. Licence type, police avoidance behaviors and driver thrill seeking affected transient rule violations only, while perceptions of police enforcement affected fixed rule violations only.

This study suggests that police enforcement of young driver violations of traffic laws may not be as effective as expected and that the authors need to improve the way in which police enforce road laws for young novice drivers.

This paper identifies that perceptions of police enforcement by young drivers does not influence all types of road offences.

In this chapter, I examine stories that foster care youth tell to legislatures, courts, policymakers, and the public to influence policy decisions. The stories told by these children are analogized to victim truth testimony, analyzed as a therapeutic, procedural, and developmental process, and examined as a catalyst for systemic accountability and change. Youth stories take different forms and appear in different media: testimony in legislatures, courts, research surveys or studies; opinion editorials and interviews in newspapers or blog posts; digital stories on YouTube; and artistic expression. Lawyers often serve as conduits for youth storytelling, translating their clients’ stories to the public. Organized advocacy by youth also informs and animates policy development. One recent example fosters youth organizing to promote “normalcy” in child welfare practices in Florida, and in related federal legislation.