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The purpose of this paper is to present a new conceptual framework for service organizations to achieve sustainable business performance through strategic quality orientation and innovation capabilities on the basis of relevant literature review and integration of various innovation and business sustainability theories and models. The study tests if the strategic quality orientation enhances innovation capabilities in terms of exploitation and explorative innovation, which, in turn, can lead to sustainable business growth. Mediating impact of innovation capabilities between strategic quality orientation and sustainable business growth relationship is also examined.

A conceptual framework was developed to test and establish these relationships. Results were analyzed based on 442 questionnaires collected from five different service industries of Pakistan, and the structural equation modeling technique was used to empirically test the conceptual framework.

The results indicate that strategic quality orientation directly affects innovation capabilities and sustainable business growth and also indirectly impacts sustainable business growth through its effect on innovation capabilities.

The study suggests service organizations can jointly implement quality and innovation using a structured approach, with strategic quality orientation as the foundation. In this way, they can leverage from their strategic quality management, supplier relationship, corporate quality culture, continual improvement and people management in order to ensure innovation and sustainability in their business growth.

The study integrates strategic quality orientation and innovation capabilities, and validates a new organizational framework through empirical examination which can be used by service organizations to ensure their sustainable business growth.

Producers of specialty products that apply nonindustrial production techniques to deliver high quality and authenticity to niche markets define themselves in opposition to industrial production. This forces them to strike a delicate balance between, on the one hand, emphasizing the symbolic value related to quality, creativity and distance from traditional industrial production, and on the other hand, ensuring profitability through commercial orientation. This paper aims to explore how new and established firms benefit from a different balance between a strategic orientation toward creativity and the symbolic value of specialty products and commercialization.

Based on survey data from 99 specialty coffee roasters, this study uses statistical regression models to analyze how new versus established firms benefit from a strategic orientation toward creativity versus commercialization.

The authors find that firms benefit from shifting the balance from a strategic orientation on creativity in new firms to a strategic orientation on commercialization in more established firms. This shift increases the likelihood that firms’ passion and creativity lead to commercial success.

The findings demonstrate the importance of strategic orientation and emphasize that business owners need to revisit and adjust their strategic orientation as their businesses develop.

This paper is to examine whether organizational ambidexterity leads to success. Moreover, it attempts to understand how proactiveness and quality orientation might create and maintain ambidexterity. Environmental uncertainty as a moderator is also examined.

To achieve these objectives an empirical survey was conducted among 449 firms in Greece. Initially, EFA and then CFA were applied. Finally, the structural relationships among the latent factors were determined through SEM.

Organizational ambidexterity leads to superior business performance, moreover, the two antecedents were positively related to organizational ambidexterity. Environmental uncertainty acts as a moderator between organizational ambidexterity– business performance and proactiveness–organizational ambidexterity.

A research challenge is to understand how organizations develop ambidexterity competency in different organizational structure. Moreover, it will be important to expand the model by taking into consideration different factors of antecedents, for example, type of innovation or different strategic orientations.

This study sends the message that companies focussing on specific antecedents can be led to higher ambidexterity capabilities, which in turn act as a catalyst for business improvement.

The proposed model provides plausible guidelines that advance organizational ambidexterity research in the companies.

Examines organizational objectives when conducting quality planning and how different planning objectives are related to its perceived performance. The sample included 42 firms representing five different planning objective orientations. Four distinct cluster groups emerged. The four orientations were named as “strategic impact and communication”, “product/process improvement”, “co‐ordination”, and “no clear objectives”, based on the interpretation of the planning objectives that loaded on each respective factor. The results suggest that certain quality planning objectives were associated with significantly higher perceived performance and the level of planning sophistication only influenced the planning performance of some groups.

Explores the dynamic relationships involved in achieving a strategic quality orientation in a business setting. The relevant literature was revived. A methodology for implementing a strategic quality perspective was developed and tested in a field study. The methodology stresses both the technical and cultural aspects of the implementation process and provides a road map for other businesses pursuing ISO 9000 and total quality management.

Seventy‐five new product development projects were studied in ten large companies to test potential strategic and process antecedents to quality. Seven factors were found to significantly increase product quality: high importance placed on quality by top management, high reward for process speed, high project stream breadth, high use of internal (versus external) sources of ideas and technology, low overlap or concurrency of the development process, low turfguarding or “silo” orientation, and high development milestone frequency. These results suggest that managers need to pay attention to both strategic orientation factors and structure‐related organizational capability factors to increase product quality. Staffing‐related factors did not seem to have a strong impact on quality; this suggests that quality is more a function of systemic versus individual factors. Additionally, it was found that there were some differences in the factors associated with high‐quality products between radical and incremental innovations. However, the study is exploratory and further research needs to test these findings as well as extend them to include other interrelationships between factors.

The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, to address a key but neglected area of research in operation and strategy that is the association between strategic orientation of the firm and its innovation emphasis on the current and future operation initiatives. Second, to explore and examine respective performance implications of these two kinds of operation strategies.

Data from a carefully designed and conducted survey of Malaysia manufacturing SMEs were analysed using a structural equation modelling approach.

Findings suggest that strategic innovation is strongly associated with both types of innovative operation strategies and they bring about different operational and market performance outcomes for the firm. This sheds light on a new framework for understanding the strategic architecture of innovation in operation strategies.

This study was limited to the small manufacturing firms in Malaysia. As a result, to assess its generalizability it can be replicated in other sectors and also other countries.

Several managerial implications emanate from this research. Most notably is the notion that strategic orientation is a key antecedent of innovation in operation strategies and in particular, it affects both current and future related innovative initiatives. This indicates that executives of manufacturing firms must align their innovative moves with their strategic mind-set to achieve their desired outcomes both operationally and financially.

To the best of knowledge of the author and based on a comprehensive review of past research, this study is original in two ways: first it is the first research that links strategic orientation with dual innovative operation strategies and second it is the first attempt to investigate respective operational and financial outcomes of these associations separately. This framework adds new insights and original value to several bodies of knowledge.

The relationship between organization strategy and a high-involvement work system (HIWS) in the accumulation of social capital is investigated in nursing subunits in a large sample of Canadian long-term care organizations. Results suggest that strategic orientation of nursing homes has a differential impact on the ability of these organizations to accumulate social capital in its nursing staff. Using a competing values framework to characterize strategic orientation, long-term care establishments pursuing an employee-focused strategy are able to accumulate higher levels of social capital in their nursing units through the adoption of a high-involvement human resource management (HRM) work system. By contrast, long-term care organizations pursuing an operational efficiency strategy, in tandem with the adoption of a high-involvement HRM system, produce no additional accumulation in nursing unit social capital.

The purpose of the research was to examine the effect of strategic orientation on organizational innovativeness of small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Moreover, in order to highlight the constructive role of strategic orientation, the study also observes the intervening role of strategic alignment and moderating role of strategic flexibility.

Data were collected from 209 owner/managers of SMEs through self-administered questionnaires. Descriptive statistics, correlation and hierarchical regression were used for testing the study hypotheses.

Results revealed that strategic orientation is positively related to SMEs innovativeness. Strategic alignment mediates between the strategic orientation and innovativeness link. Furthermore, the findings also established that the association between strategic orientation and strategic alignment is stronger when SMEs are strategically flexible.

Organizational innovativeness is of vital importance for SMEs strength, especially in the context of developing economies. Although researchers have acknowledged several antecedents of SMEs innovativeness, however, it is still unclear how strategic orientation influences organizational innovativeness. Moreover, the study focuses on another important element of strategic alignment through the integration of goals and strategies to achieve innovativeness.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate issues related to the application of Lean Six Sigma (L6σ) in a service industry. By adopting a case‐study approach this paper analytically explores the critical success factors that affect L6σ implementation.

The study adopts a qualitative approach attempting to explore the nature of L6σ application in a service context. In particular, two case studies from the telecommunications industry have been selected. Secondary data were collected through an analysis of companies' documents, written procedures and quality assurance policies. Moreover, primary data were collected through a number of interviews with managers and quality experts.

There are particular factors that influence the implementation of L6σ in organizations, that can be distinguished in facilitators like Top Management Involvement & Support, Quality‐driven Organizational Culture, Quality‐driven Training, Top Down & Bottom Up Project Selection, Customer Satisfaction, Prior implementation of other quality improvement programs and Supportive Performance Management & IT Systems, and inhibitors such as Lack of Awareness for L6σ, Lack of Awareness for the Need of Continuous Quality Improvement Programs & L6σ, Lack of Strategic Orientation, Working Mentality & Habits.

The main limitation of the study is the fact that in both cases only managers and top administrators were approached. Frontline employees who are directly involved in L6σ approach may offer a clearer view on issues related to the impact of critical factors on L6σ application.

This study has four major advantages. First, it expands our understanding regarding the implementation of L6σ in a service industry, in which the application of management models is more complex and problematic. Second, it focuses on the responses of managers, who always play the most significant role in the adoption of such techniques. Third, it explores the quality management initiatives in the telecommunications industry. Finally, it provides future studies with a L6σ multi‐factor application approach that can be further tested and developed.