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This study aims to dissect the multifaceted impact of ISO/IEC 17025 accreditation, specifically within civil engineering testing and calibration laboratories. To achieve this, it intends to explore several key objectives: identifying the prominent benefits of accreditation to laboratory performance, understanding the advantages conferred through participation in proficiency testing schemes, assessing the role of accreditation in enhancing laboratory competitiveness, examining the primary challenges encountered during the accreditation process, investigating any discernible adverse effects of accreditation on laboratory performance and evaluating whether the financial cost of accreditation justifies the resultant profitability.

This study employs a qualitative approach through semi-structured interviews with 23 industry professionals—including technical managers, quality managers, external auditors and clients. Thematic analysis, guided by Braun and Clarke’s six-stage paradigm, was utilized to interpret the data, ensuring a comprehensive understanding of the accreditation’s impact.

Findings reveal that accreditation significantly enhances operational processes, fosters quality awareness and facilitates continuous improvement, contributing to greater client satisfaction. In addition, standardized operations and rigorous quality controls further result in enhanced performance metrics, such as staff capability and measurement accuracy. However, the study also uncovers the challenges of accreditation, including high resource costs and bureaucratic hurdles that can inhibit innovation and slow routine operations. Importantly, the research underscores that the impact of accreditation on profitability is not universal, but contingent upon various factors like sector-specific regulations and market demand. The study also highlights sector-specific variations in the role of accreditation as a marketing tool and differing perceptions of its value among clients. It further emphasizes the psychological stress of high-stakes evaluations during audits.

This study represents the first in-depth investigation into the impact of ISO/IEC 17025 accreditation on civil engineering testing and calibration laboratories, directly contributing to the enhancement of their quality and operational standards. Providing actionable insights for laboratories, it underscores the importance of weighing accreditation costs and benefits and the necessity for a tailored approach to the unique market and regulatory landscapes they operate in.

Against the backdrop of IBM Personal Computer Business's acquisition by Lenovo Group, this case introduces the remodeling process of Lenovo's HR organization and development team, during which the company's 5P principle, namely “Plan (think clearly before making promise), Perform (promise is to be fulfilled), Prioritize (company's interest is top priority), Practice (make progress every day in every year), Pioneering (venture any experiment to be a trailblazer), takes shape. After learning about Lenovo's recruitment of internationalized talents, cross-cultural coaches for senior leaders, cultural development in internationalization and risk aversion in international operations, we can understand what Lenovo's HR team does to avoid conflicts in corporate culture and ethnic culture in cross-border mergers and acquisitions and integration, and how to adjust and change the HR management system.

This paper deals with external audits, which are now commonly used in many industries (e.g. food, automotive and electrical). This study aims to assess whether a given organization meets the specific criteria. If the audit ends with a positive result, information about it is provided to selected interested parties, e.g. clients or contractors. Credibility is pivotal in adding value for all interested parties within the audit processes. This study seeks the factors which, in the opinion of the audited enterprises, have the most decisive impact on the credibility of external audits.

In keeping with the extant literature, research questions were developed regarding the factors influencing the credibility assessment of external audits. Data collected from 100 companies in the Polish food sector were used to construct the model and carry out statistical analyses. Linear regression analyses were also applied to determine the key factors influencing the credibility of audits.

This study is part of the research trend on the rationality of external audits and certification of quality management systems. This paper identifies nine main factors shaping the credibility of external audits. Two of them have the most decisive influence on credibility. The first one is the professional audit method (procedure). The second factor is the auditor’s knowledge of the specificity of the audited area.

This study did not consider the impact that the image/credibility of the organization represented by the auditors may have on the reliability of audits. This is one of the fundamental limitations that should be considered when analyzing the obtained results. To recognize this type of dependence, additional research should be carried out. Another limitation is that the research covers the food industry only. It would be interesting to know the situation in other types of industries.

This paper looks at the possibility of increasing the added value for audited enterprises. The proposed model can be used by managers of organizations conducting external audits and auditors to effectively use resources for process improvement, influencing the maximization of credibility of activities in the area of conformity assessment.

The originality of this study lies in adopting the perspective of audited enterprises in assessing the credibility of audits. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that adopts this approach. This paper contributes to the literature, particularly to better understand audited enterprises’ behavior (trust in audit results, satisfaction with audits, etc.).

This work aims to present existing management system standards (MSSs) published by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) through a bibliometric analysis, thereby outlining their academic research status and highlighting their relation to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as well as to environmental, social and governance (ESG) themes.

The study firstly retrieves a preliminary set of MSSs standards from ISO and filters it in accordance with certain exclusion/inclusion criteria. Secondly, a bibliometric search is performed in the database Scopus. Thirdly, performance analysis is conducted to quantitatively measure the scientific output in academia, and science mapping of co-occurrences of keywords is applied to identify related topics. Thereby, the standards’ relationships to sustainability are outlined. Eventually, the work discusses future research opportunities.

The findings reveal that whereas research on MSSs focuses predominantly on only a few standards by now, there are actually numerous further standards that address sustainability-relevant topics, which are getting increasing attention among scholars as measured by the number of publications. Therefore, an action plan for future research is derived. Moreover, the findings support the argument of integrating MSSs to cover a broad range of corporate sustainability issues.

The paper connects the concepts of MSSs and sustainability, an upcoming research branch yet characterized by shortage of academic studies (given that research continues to focus on a few standards such as ISO 9001, ISO 14001 and ISO 45001). The work therefore opens up the line for more in-detail research on less known but nevertheless sustainability-relevant ISO MSSs.

This article aims to map the expectations of manufacturing companies towards suppliers in terms of implementing improvement activities. The article poses two research questions: RQ1: What kind of improvement of activities do the surveyed producers expect from their suppliers? RQ2: Do factors such as size, capital or implemented systems influence different assessments of the analyzed requirements toward suppliers?

The Computer Assisted Telephone Interview (CATI) technique was used to collect data. The sample consists of 150 producers (employing over 50 people) who were suppliers for enterprises from the automotive, electromechanical and chemical sectors operating in the Polish business-to-business (B2B) market. We analyzed 11 improvement activities, while their correlation structure was examined by exploratory factor analysis.

We have identified three latent factors – risk reduction, product innovation and increasing efficiency – which summarize the main expectations of manufacturing companies towards suppliers. Expectations for these factors are independent of the implemented management system, although the analysis showed higher expectations for product innovation in organizations with the implementation of Kaizen.

The article fills the research gap in the literature. The research results presented in the literature so far have focused on the expectations of enterprises towards suppliers in terms of meeting the criteria for their initial and periodic assessment. The research gap in the article is the result of empirical research presenting the expectations of manufacturers towards suppliers in terms of improving their processes. Based on the findings of the presented study, development trends and implications for managers responsible for purchasing processes and relationships with suppliers can be determined.

This chapter of the book seeks to use famous mathematical functions (statistical distribution functions) in evaluating and analyzing supply chain network data related to supply chain management (SCM) elements in organizations. In other words, the main purpose of this chapter is to find the best-fitted statistical distribution functions for SCM data. Explaining how to best fit the statistical distribution function along with the explanation of all possible aspects of a function for selected components of SCM from this chapter will make a significant attraction for production and services experts who will lead their organization to the path of competitive excellence. The main core of the chapter is the reliability values related to the reliability function calculated by the relevant chart and extracting other information based on other aspects of statistical distribution functions such as probability density, cumulative distribution, and failure function. This chapter of the book will turn readers into professional users of statistical distribution functions in mathematics for analyzing supply chain element data.

In the increasingly competitive leisure food market, Lyfen has become a well-known leisure food brand in Shanghai after long-term independent operation. Insisting on chain retail specializing in various kinds of leisure food, Lyfen captures the consumption habits of consumers, timely launches new products in line with consumers' preferences, and leads the consumption trend. Its main competitors include other leading enterprises in China's leisure food chain industry, such as Three Squirrels, BESTORE and Baiweilin. The company's products are mainly divided into nine categories, totaling more than 900 special products. Some products under Lyfen's name have established good reputation in East China. Regarding business model, Lyfen has devoted its full energy to the construction of brand and channel, and created a unique asset-light model, which mainly involves sourcing and sales two chains.

To redesign the spare parts (MRO) inventory management at Company XYZ's warehouse, considering the conditions after the COVID-19 pandemic.

To address this research project, the authors integrated three methodologies: action research, Lean Six Sigma (DMAIC) and Cross Industry Standard Process for Data Mining. These methodologies integrated the Lean Six Sigma (LSS) 4.0 framework applied in this project.

The spare parts inventory value was reduced by 15%, and inventory turnover increased by 120% without negatively impacting the internal service level.

Practitioners leading or participating in continuous improvement projects (CIPs) should consider data quality (data available and data trustworthiness), problem-solving approach and target area involvement to achieve CIP goals. Otherwise, the LSS 4.0 could fail or extend its duration by several weeks or months.

This project shows the importance of controlling a target area before deciding to conduct a LSS 4.0 project. To address this problem, the LSS 4.0 team implemented 5S during the measure phase of the DMAIC. Also, this project offers significant practitioner and theoretical contributions to the body of knowledge about LSS 4.0.

In response to a critical need for uniform school crisis preparedness and response efforts across districts, the National Association of School Psychologists developed PREPaRE, a model and training curriculum aimed to equip school-based professionals to engage in comprehensive school crisis prevention and intervention practices. The PREPaRE acronym stands for: Prevent/Prepare for psychological trauma; Reaffirm physical health, security, and safety; Evaluate psychological trauma; Provide interventions (and) Respond to psychological needs; and Examine the effectiveness of prevention and intervention efforts. The model spans four crisis preparedness phases: Prevention, Mitigation, Response, and Recovery. This chapter provides a detailed overview of the development and structure of the PREPaRE model's core components and the organizational framework of the Incident Command System. It delineates elements of the basic school crisis response plan, assessment of mental health risk following a crisis event, and the provision of crisis interventions within a multitiered system of support framework. Additionally, it summarizes ongoing effectiveness and implementation research used to evaluate and improve the model based on immediate training outcomes assessed through pre and postmeasures and training transfer to applied school contexts. Implications for research and public policy regarding school safety and crisis prevention and intervention, as well as the future of PREPaRE curriculum development, are discussed.

This study empirically investigates the impacts of technological innovation and operational efficiency on environmental performance and the moderating effects of environmental orientation.

We develop a conceptual framework based on the Porter Hypothesis. We collect a sample of 850 listed firms in China between 2010 and 2019. The fixed effect model was used to analyse the data.

The empirical findings reveal that technological innovation indirectly enhances environmental performance through operational efficiency and partially mediates this impact. We also find that environmental orientation strengthens the positive impacts of technological innovation and operational efficiency on environmental performance.

This study contributes to the literature by revealing that technological innovation is positively associated with operational efficiency and environmental performance, which suggests that technological innovation can simultaneously enhance business and environmental performance. Hence, this study provides empirical support for the Porter Hypothesis. The results also extend the Porter Hypothesis by revealing how technological innovation affects environmental performance and under what conditions technological innovation has a greater impact on environmental performance.