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This study aims to explore the effect of the board of directors on the capital structure of listed non-financial firms on the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX).

Using a panel data set of 208 financial Pakistani enterprises from 2015 to 2020, regression analysis is employed to examine the data utilizing independent variables such as board size, outside directors, directors' remuneration and managerial ownership to evaluate board characteristics and the total debt ratio for capital structure.

The results show that the board size positively impacts the debt ratio. However, outside directors, directors' remuneration and managerial ownership are negatively connected with the capital structure. The empirical findings indicate that corporate governance mechanisms play an important role in the capital structure decision of Pakistani non-financial companies.

This research contributes to the literature by addressing the function of the board of directors in the governance of Pakistani enterprises.

Few studies in Pakistan focus on board characteristics and those that do utilize different variables. This research aims to fill a critical gap by investigating the effect of the board of directors' attributes and the capital structure of the listed non-financial sector of Pakistan.

The performance of Ardalan′s heuristic is compared with that of Teitz and Bart for the location of service facilities, where performance is assessed in terms of the accuracy of solutions. The comparison is made considering two kinds of location problem: p‐median and p‐median with maximum distance constraints. The results indicate that the Teitz and Bart method generally produces a better solution than the Ardalan method for both problems.

The objective of the study is to examine the extent to which quality management practices, tools and methods are employed and adopted in Australian companies.

To address the aim of the study, a survey instrument was developed and data were collected from a field research on a sample of manufacturing, retail, and logistics companies.

The results of this study indicate that the primary obstacles for not implementing quality programs are “establishing employee ownership of the quality process”, “changing the corporate culture”, and “training and education of employees”. The results also show that the most important component that identifies quality in logistics is “on‐time delivery”.

This study demonstrates that integration of quality programs with corporate strategy, development of closer links with suppliers, and consistency in order cycle are critical initiatives required for improvement.

Aims to examine the state of leadership and HR focus in TQM research in Australia from published literature and to determine areas for future research. The literature search covered 31 reputable referred journals over the years 1985‐1999 and identified 90 articles which focused on aspects of TQM. However, it was not possible to identify the primary focus of 23 articles, hence these were not considered for further analysis. The rest of the articles (67) were classified using the seven criteria of the Australian Business Excellence Framework and it was found that about 40 per cent of the reviewed articles had leadership and HR as primary focus. The review shows that considerable attention has been devoted to research in strategic direction, organizational culture of the leadership category and, involvement and commitment, and effectiveness and development of the people category. Further research is necessary in areas such as top management's role in environmental issues and community contribution, health, safety and well‐being of employees, and dissemination of leadership throughout organizations.

Summarizes the quality control methods and techniques developed over the last five decades and categorizes them into three broad approaches, each identified with three broadly‐defined product development stages. Observes that the quality management approaches developed and applied to assess and improve product quality have followed the opposite sequence of the product development stages.

Many attempts have been made to study factors influencing the performance of supply chains. These studies are generally quantitative and involve rigorous statistical analyses. This paper describes an application of a systems approach known as the thinking process of the theory of constraints not only to identify critical success factors in supply chain management, but also to understand causal relationships between these factors. The study was conducted in a group‐based model building environment with a group of students who specialised either in logistics management or e‐commerce. The results suggest that understanding the dynamic nature of supply chains through cause and effect relationships is critical to the formulation of supply chain growth strategies.

Over the last decade, Australian organisations have embraced total quality management (TQM) as an effective management philosophy. However, a recent report indicated that there is little evidence of leading Australian researchers working on quality and related areas. Moreover, the perception is that whatever research has been done, it is fragmented and at a low level. In the light of this we conducted an extensive literature search on TQM materials. Our purpose was to provide a systematic analysis of the TQM articles published by the Australian researchers or in the context of Australian organisations. Our analysis led us to conclude that the research has been unbalanced, focusing mainly on case studies and empirical research. Further research is necessary to develop conceptual underpinning and analytical models based on large empirical studies.

This paper analyses results from a survey of 962 Australian manufacturing companies in order to identify some of the factors critical for successful agile organizations in managing their supply chains. Analysis of the survey results provided some interesting insights into factors differentiating “more agile” organizations from “less agile” organizations. “More agile” companies from this study can be characterized as more customer focused, and applying a combination of “soft” and “hard” methodologies in order to meet changing customer requirements. They also see the involvement of suppliers in this process as being crucial to their ability to attain high levels of customer satisfaction. The “less agile” group, on the other hand, can be characterized as more internally focused with a bias toward internal operational outcomes. They saw no link between any of the independent variables and innovation, and appear to see technology as more closely linked to the promotion of these operational outcomes than to customer satisfaction. The role of suppliers for this group is to support productivity and process improvement rather than to promote customer satisfaction.

Recently, a highly credible report suggested that the quality philosophy and quality standards have not effectively reached the core of Australia’s commercial base – 780,000 small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Drawing on this critical finding, this study aims at providing empirical evidence on the differences in total quality management (TQM) implementation and organisational performance of SMEs in Western Australia, with and without ISO 9000 certification. Using the criteria of the Australian Business Excellence (ABE) framework as a guide, a questionnaire with 36 items was developed, checked for reliability and validity and applied to create a self‐assessment measure of TQM practices. The results showed that there was no significant difference between SMEs with and without ISO 9000 certification with respect to TQM implementation and organisational performance. This result concurs with the findings of studies conducted in the context of large organisations in Australia.

A new approach to the management of production and operations was developed by Goldratt in the late 1970s. Now known as the theory of constraints (TOC), it provides a coherent management theory for running an organisation. It has two major components: a philosophy which underpins the working principle of on‐going improvement, and a generic approach for investigating, analysing and creating solutions to problems called the “thinking process” (TP). During the last decade several books and many articles have been published, and a journal has been established which deals solely with the TOC. This paper contains an analysis of a comprehensive list of publications on the TOC. Identified themes are classified as conceptual explanation and enhancement of the approach, comparison with other techniques based on its philosophy, and applications in areas such as production, purchasing, accounting, administration, education and quality management.