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Software process tailoring (SPT) plays a critical role in contemporary software development. Because SPT determines how a software project proceeds, its effectiveness should be investigated. Specifically, SPT is a collaborative yet highly conflictual process, and the existing literature has paid little or no attention to how team members coordinate and to how power distance (PD) influences coordination under this conflictual situation for the purpose of fostering SPT effectiveness.

A propositional research method is utilized by reviewing the extant literature regarding SPT, team coordination and PD. Accordingly, several propositions are developed to theorize the contributive and moderating effects of team coordinative capabilities and PD on SPT effectiveness.

This study advances the understanding of the underlying mechanisms of the four distinct coordination capabilities in performing SPT, which will help software firms comprehend the moderating effects of PD on the relationships among coordinative capabilities and SPT effectiveness.

This study extends coordination theory and reveals four coordination capabilities that nurture SPT effectiveness. Moreover, this study demonstrates how power plays a role in the coordination of a team through the collaborative yet divergent SPT decision process to yield an integrative tailoring solution. In particular, we take a fresh viewpoint of PD considering the member-member relationship in exploring its moderating effects in the SPT context.

Software process tailoring (SPT) is a knowledge- and learning-intensive activity in which a software project team customizes its software development processes to accommodate project particularities. Because SPT critically influences how a project is conducted, SPT performance should be investigated, but the extant literature lacks investigations into how team knowledge mechanisms and team environments contribute to SPT performance. To fill this gap, this study looks into a team's absorptive capacity (AC) and combines a transactive memory system (TMS) and team climate inventory (TCI) to develop a theoretical research model to facilitate the understanding of SPT performance.

This paper is a conceptual study that uses the propositional methodology with a focused review of existing literature pertaining to SPT, AC, TMS and TCI to develop a theoretical model to foster SPT performance. Because this study is conceptually established, further empirical research and studies are also suggested.

The proposed model provides guidance for firms conducting SPT. It also contributes to future research aiming to empirically understand the mechanisms behind the identified team-based knowledge and environmental enablers in the dynamic team learning process that lead to superior SPT performance.

The proposed model provides a fresh look at the dynamic capabilities theory in SPT and innovatively identifies a team's dynamic learning process to show how a team can conduct effective SPT through AC and facilitated by TMS. Environmental climates characterized by vision, participative safety, task orientation and support for innovation act as positive moderators in promoting the team dynamic learning process.

This research proposes weighted grey relational analysis (WGRA) method to evaluate the performance of 325 multilevel dispatching rules in the wafer fabrication process.

The research methodology involves multilevel dispatching rule generation, simulations, WGRA and result analysis. A complete permutation of multilevel dispatching rules, including the partial orders, is generated from five basic rules. Performance measures include cycle time, move, tool idling and queue time. The simulation model and data are obtained from a wafer fab in Malaysia. Two seasons varying in customer orders and objective weights are defined. Finally, to benchmark performance and investigate the effect of varying values of coefficient, the models are compared against TOPSIS and VIKOR.

Results show that the seasons prefer different multilevel dispatching rules. In Normal season, the ideal first basic dispatching rule is critical ratio (CR) and CR followed by shortest processing time (SPT) is the best precedence pairing. In Peak season, the superiority of the rule no longer heavily relies on the first basic rule but rather depends on the combination of tiebreaker rules and on-time delivery (OTD) followed by CR is considered the best precedence pairing. Compared to VIKOR and TOPSIS, WGRA generates more stable rankings in this study. The performance of multicriteria decision-making (MCDM) methods is influenced by the data variability, as a higher variability produces a much consistent ranking.

As research implications, the application illustrates the effectiveness and practicality of the WGRA model in analyzing multilevel dispatching rules, considering the complexity of the semiconductor wafer fabrication system. The methodology is useful for researchers wishing to integrate MCDM model into multilevel dispatching rules. The limitation of the research is that the results were obtained from a simulation model. Also, the rules, criteria and weights assigned in WGRA were decided by the management. Lastly, the distinguishing coefficient is fixed at 0.5 and the effect to the ranking requires further study.

The research is the first deployment WGRA in ranking multilevel dispatching rules. Multilevel dispatching rules are rarely studied in scheduling research although studies show that the tiebreakers affect the performances of the dispatching rules. The scheduling reflects the characteristics of wafer fabrication and general job shop, such as threshold and look-ahead policies.

This paper aims to analyse expectation and reality in enterprise resource planning implementation from the consultants' and software vendors' point of view and process these further as requirements of future IT systems.

A small‐scale survey among Finnish enterprise resource planning system (ERP) software vendors and consultants on ERP implementation challenges is analysed (n=59). The results are connected to existing literature in the field of deploying ERP systems in the form of discussion.

The consultants' opinions show similar results with studies conducted with companies using ERP systems. The implementer's point of view shows clearly the challenge of using standardized ERP packages for various requirements on different levels. Although the sales presentations tend to emphasize the general purpose and flexibility of software packages, the dilemma between customization and vanilla system remains. The implementer's viewpoint emphasises challenges in operations: production planning, materials management, sales and marketing.

The complexities of large ERP systems represent a true challenge from the knowledge transfer point of view. Standardized ERP packages implement standardized approaches, which has been a key benefit. The results show that the challenges are related to production planning and materials management.

Software vendors and consultants have a thorough knowledge of ERP implementation, but still the key challenges remain much the same. ERP project deployment requires careful planning with regard to the change management aspects, but also IT related technical aspects. The paper presents a checklist for matching the ERP system with the specific requirements of the company.

The results of the survey triangulate and justify many aspects found in previous research. From the consultants' point of view developments in production planning and complex products are especially needed. Initial solutions and further research are outlined.

While it is well known that managers make scheduling decisions based on multiple objectives, the majority of sequencing research is directed towards single criterion assessments of scheduling performance. A preference value decision model approach for the selection of job shop sequencing rules using multiple performance criteria is presented. The model is general in nature and may be applied to any of a number of sequencing rules and performance measures. A case example is provided to illustrate the procedure.

Taking jointly into account social commerce and online brand community, this paper aims to investigate how the growth of social commerce and the fast adoption of online brand communities have given firms the opportunity to establish a new kind of community, namely, the social commerce brand community. Adopting a managerial perspective, the research aims to identify the core dimensions of social commerce brand community and shed light on how they contribute in engaging customers and transform them into brand advocates.

Five social commerce retailers operating into five different sectors of activity have been involved in a multiple case study. Data retrieved from semi-structured interviews have been triangulated with information gathered from different sources to provide depth to the cases and enhance data validity.

This study substantiates the rise of social commerce brand community as a new phenomenon that differs from traditional online brand communities and provides firms with concrete support in selling activities and in managing relationships with customers. The multiple case study allows also to detect social commerce brand community core pillars, namely, participants’ identification, participation, conversation and social support. These four elements turned out to be crucial to develop an effective social commerce brand community.

This study extends existing theory on social commerce and online brand community by investigating the social commerce brand community as a new phenomenon and clarifying the fundamental pillars on which it relies.

This study extends existing theory on social commerce and online brand community by investigating the social commerce brand community as a new phenomenon and clarifying the fundamental pillars on which it relies.

This paper aims to explore the feasible mining and proper selection of QoS‐aware services for a P2P‐based business process enactment framework, and enhance the relevant workflow prototype. Design/methodology/approach – Through observing and analysing unpredictable dynamic changes that commonly exist in e‐service workflow, a set of QoS specifications and monitoring mechanisms in a P2P workflow framework is proposed. These specifications are an evolving extension of services' description with semantic web facilitators for P2P‐based e‐services.

It has been demonstrated that the QoS‐OWL approach can be effectively used to describe and exploit e‐services, particularly in a decentralised environment. QoS‐OWL is also able to provide the deliberation of geographic information for e‐services, and facilitates the peers' effective cooperation and automates business processes. It is recommended that the approach be adopted in the dynamic online information system environment to increase efficiency and reduce costs in running e‐services.

The QoS attributes discussed in this paper are relatively typical for benchmarking purposes, so the extension of the QoS metrics specifications and related protocols need to be discussed in future work.

The authors propose an approach to dynamically selecting appropriate service‐oriented peers in a P2P network, where the composition of e‐services in a business process can be enhanced significantly. The approach is based on ontology and QoS perspectives, and the descriptions of services have rich semantic features in an attempt to make the service selection more intelligent and reliable. Therefore the proposal offers e‐service providers innovative initiatives to re‐engineer their business services.

Organizes the wide‐ranging literature on “new wave manufacturing” factors which impact on the flow of materials into six themes which are related to a conceptual model. The six themes are: the effects of under‐capacity loading; the role of pull scheduling; the reduction of variability; the reduction of throughput time; the effects of reduced throughput time and of schedule stability on outbound logistics; and the application of synchronous flow to inbound logistics. Concludes that case study methodology offers wider potential to research casual links in the potentially complex interactions involved.

The librarian and researcher have to be able to uncover specific articles in their areas of interest. This Bibliography is designed to help. Volume IV, like Volume III, contains features to help the reader to retrieve relevant literature from MCB University Press' considerable output. Each entry within has been indexed according to author(s) and the Fifth Edition of the SCIMP/SCAMP Thesaurus. The latter thus provides a full subject index to facilitate rapid retrieval. Each article or book is assigned its own unique number and this is used in both the subject and author index. This Volume indexes 29 journals indicating the depth, coverage and expansion of MCB's portfolio.