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Competitive advantage is often determined by the effectiveness of an organization's supply chain, and as a result, the evaluation and selection of suppliers has become an increasingly important management activity. But the evaluation process is complex. The data that must be considered are both technical and social/organizational. Much of the data are difficult to obtain and ambiguous or vague to interpret. In addition, the dynamic global environment of changing exchange rates, economic conditions, and technical infrastructure, demand that the pool of potential suppliers be re‐evaluated periodically. Nonetheless, a rational process of evaluation must exist to select the most appropriate suppliers. This paper addresses one dimension of the evaluation process, the information sharing capability of potential supply chain partners. It is an especially important dimension since information technology is necessary to horizontally integrate geographically dispersed operations. Fuzzy logic, a subset of artificial intelligence, together with analytical hierarchy process is used to model this process and rank potential suppliers. It is an appropriate methodology to use for this application and has the potential to be used with other supply chain design decisions since it explicitly handles vague, ambiguous, and imprecise data.

The purpose of this study is to delineate key aspects of backshoring readiness and discuss how such aspects contribute to a smooth shift-back from global sourcing operations. It aims to answer the following questions: which factors constitute backshoring readiness and how these factors affect the backshoring transition.

Based on theory departure from the organizational readiness field and the emerging field on backshoring, a conceptual model is developed. A multiple qualitative case study is then conducted to exemplify the backshoring readiness factors delineated in the study.

The study indicates that due to previous outsourcing, limitations concerning the availability of firms’ capabilities are affected by ownership structures and that backshoring appears to be time-sensitive. The study delineates three key aspects of backshoring readiness and proposes a comprehensive understanding of readiness as an important construct to enhance successful backshoring.

The findings are limited by the nature of this conceptual study, the restriction to a high-cost context and the small number of cases. Therefore, conclusions and proposed recommendations need to be further investigated in preferably larger samples of case studies.

By introducing contextual variables that go beyond traditional cost considerations, this work should be of special interest for both practitioners and academics, because the absorptive capacity for the exploitation of cutting-edge knowledge is globally scarce and hence rather expensive in Western countries compared with traditionally low-cost countries. Another practical contribution of this study is the conceptual backshoring readiness framework itself, as it can guide firms acquainting themselves with the resource availability in their home environment.

The research defines key resources needed to facilitate backshoring readiness in a conceptual framework developed from literature, which is then exemplified by a case study. This framework conceptualizes backshoring readiness as aspects of requirements to knowledge, technology and supplier infrastructures. Furthermore, the readiness framework developed provides firms and their managers with six recommendations that can enable a rigorous evaluation of a firm’s readiness to embark on backshoring and reflect on the aspect of fitness of its current strategies.

The purpose of this paper is to characterize the interfaces between manufacturing companies and the Internet of Things (IoT) suppliers involved in their digital servitization.

This paper builds on an explorative case study of a manufacturing firm and its IoT suppliers. This paper relies on the Industrial Network Approach to study interfaces between buying firms and their suppliers.

This paper identifies three distinct types of supplier interfaces: connected, digital and digital-physical. They all contain technical resource interfaces with additional organizational and/or technical complexities that need to be managed. Connectivity, an Agile approach to software development and strong technical dependence emerged as key factors that impact the interactions between manufacturing firms and IoT suppliers and how their resources are combined.

This paper offers managerial implications regarding the importance of internal organization (such as appropriate cross-functional teams) to manage the dynamics of collaborations required by digital technologies, maintain interactions with IoT suppliers and identify and manage interdependences between IoT suppliers. Building close relationships with suppliers of crucial infrastructure (e.g. IoT cloud platform and data security systems) can also be beneficial for manufacturing firms to reduce risks. Finally, attention should be given to IoT technology strategy, which impacts both digital and digital-physical supplier interfaces.

In digital servitization, manufacturing firms are heavily reliant on external resources for IoT technology. Despite this, few studies have investigated the characteristics of their interfaces with IoT suppliers, how these can be managed and how resources are combined.

This investigation provides an understanding of network orchestration as an impersonal, primordial driving force that challenges the view in organizational design that assigns human choice and deliberate intention a central role. The study highlights the importance of emerging strategy and the unintended consequence in bringing about a desirable outcome in MNCs’ efforts to coordinate and integrate globally dispersed capabilities. It is based on a longitudinal action research that embraces a period of transformational change between Vodafone and Ericsson to achieve cash synergies in mobile network operations globally. The findings indicate that enabling knowledge mobility, appropriating knowledge, and fostering network stability contribute to a successful economic performance as interactive, self-governing processes of network orchestration. Accordingly, we conclude that the processes of network orchestration must be understood as driven by choice sets taken while creatively coping with change rather than as primarily choice sets deliberately taken in the sequential pursuit of goals.

There are a number of impediments to consumer adoption of alternative fuel vehicles (AFVs), including regulatory barriers, resources, infrastructure and vehicle characteristics themselves. These impediments also impact on other stakeholders, such as government, producers (i.e. corporations), suppliers (collaborators), competition (i.e. alternative products) and activist groups. The inter‐relationships amongst all stakeholders are complex, as one group may initiate actions that serve as impediments for others. Developing systems‐based sustainable alternatives to traditional, environmentally‐harmful automobiles requires the network of relationships between stakeholders and impediments to be considered. This paper looks at the various impediments as well as how they can affect various stakeholders. It then posits a broad based integrative approach to provide the most favourable environment for consumers to consider AFVs.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate supply chain management practices related to flexibility, value chain and capabilities. It describes an exploratory study to examine the interrelated factors to propose a research framework.

A comparative case study was conducted on several manufacturing organizations in the electrical and electronic industry, investigating the business drivers and response effect of a flexible value chain.

In general, all the organizations enhanced their manufacturing flexibility components with supply and logistic networks in order to be responsive to customers and gain tangible benefits. The core flexibility of the value chain can be defined from operational, supply and logistics perspectives where different levels of integration and implementation strategies offer different levels of flexibility response to volume and product mix.

Research through case survey requires further empirical investigation to quantify the determinants and the significance of the relationship theorized. However, the findings confirmed the practical aspect of manufacturers to consider flexibility in designing their value chain within the industry.

The paper highlights the fact that local manufacturers value the flexibility aspect of supply chains to stay competitive during demand uncertainties and being responsive to customers.

The purpose of this paper is to show how the quality practices such as leadership and strategic quality planning, supplier relationship management, customer focus, quality data and reporting, process management and human resource management are as relevant to supply chains as they are to an individual firm.

Based on the review of relevant literature, propositions have been framed to stimulate future research. In order to evaluate the quality management (QM) practices in Pakistani supply chains, three cases have been presented. These cases provide information about QM practices of the case companies with respect to the supply chains they represent. Based on the case comparisons, common themes regarding the state of QM in Pakistani supply chains have been identified.

The current study shows that the state of QM in the supply chain context is at a primitive level in Pakistan. Most organizations have instituted quality departments and devised quality policy and planning inspired by ISO 9000 standards. However, quality culture that promotes bottom‐up improvement throughout the organization is nonexistent. Compared with the proposed framework of total supply chain quality management (TSCQM), Pakistani organizations have a long way to go before any significant integration can be achieved in the quality functions at the supply chain level.

Building upon the current literature in the field of supply chain and QM, the current study proposes a new, more comprehensive framework TSCQM.

This paper aims to examine how firms, operating in mature and growing industries, can improve the alignment of their operations strategy to fit situations characterized by varying rates of industry growth and technological changes.

The authors enhance the operations strategy typology presented by Lei and Slocum by incorporating an enhanced set of competitive priorities and supporting structure/infrastructure requirements into their four cell matrix. They then introduce a stage‐based model of environmental dynamism and complexity that can foster major transitions in operations strategy.

Industry growth and technological change interact to create alternative environments with varying levels of dynamism and complexity requiring realignment of operations strategy. With increasing rates of technological change, the authors emphasize an urgent need to include innovation as a competitive priority (along with cost, quality, delivery and flexibility) to proactively adapt operations strategy to fit changing environments. It is also necessary for managers to ensure a fit between their competitive priorities and the development of supporting structures/infrastructures to ensure effective implementation of competitive operations strategy.

Operations strategy literature has not focused attention on the basic goals and capabilities needed to implement or adapt to today's dynamic environments. This study adds innovation as a competitive priority and improves our understanding of adaptation of operations strategy to alternative environments created by the interaction of industry growth and technological change. Specifically, by focusing on competitive priorities and supporting capabilities in dynamic environments, the authors provide directions for implementing changes to operations strategy.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how Chinese enterprises overcome their lack of resource and capabilities and eventually fulfill global resource accumulation, fast innovative commercialization and significant technological breakthrough by establishing and coordinating innovation ecosystem at firm level.

This paper first reviewed the literature on the structure and coordinating mechanism of enterprise innovation ecosystem and identified two important gaps on the characteristics of ecosystem actors and the logic of innovative coordination. Then, the paper adopted grounded analysis about the construction and evolution of Haier’s innovation ecosystem based on longitudinal case data. On the basis of the case study, the construct of firm-level innovation ecosystem and new logic of coordination are formed.

This paper found the emerging phenomenon of sub-organizational ecosystem actors and depicted that the establishing process of firm-level innovation ecosystem went through three majors stages, and the corresponding coordinating logic changed from proactive intervention to reactive self-evolution.

This paper tried to make contributions to the studies of structure and coordinating mechanism of enterprise innovation ecosystem, and proposed the enterprise itself could build firm-level ecosystem within its organizational boundary and interact with external ecosystem. The findings enlightened the nested structure of ecosystem, opened the black box of organizational boundary and broke the limitation that existing researches only analyse innovation ecosystem at system level and regard firms as basic analytical unit. Besides, this paper proposed that the coordination of innovation ecosystem can be passively fulfilled by network effect and ecological evolution, where previous studies mainly focused on proactive institutional intervention and resource investment. This point could provide Chinese enterprises with good references.