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The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between training and education and associated workforce productivity and competitiveness also, to identify new effective strategies for China to maintain and enhance workforce productivity given the depleting abundant workforce supply.

Based on data from China's manufacturing firms that included all state‐owned and non‐state‐owned enterprises with annual revenue greater than ¥5 million in 2004, the authors calculate marginal labor productivity through production function and derived the relationship between workers' education and associated productivity.

At the time China arrives at a Lewisian Turing Point, workforce quality can substitute the quantity to maintain its competitive advantage. Higher workforce productivity generated from improved human capital can offset increases in labor cost, thus creating new impetus for sustained economic growth.

Formal education and workplace learning are complementary in maintaining and enhancing a productivity workforce. To build a new competitive edge for China's economic growth in the short run, enterprise‐based training should be a requirement in all industries.

The authors offer implications for HR managers and organizations on talent management strategies. Implications for governments to develop policies that promote and foster workplace learning and skill building activities are also presented.

This study is one of the first adopting large‐scale enterprise productivity data to show China's workforce competitiveness by examining the relationship between workforce productivity and training and education.

What are the most important factors to consider when introducing a quality initiative? Should you focus upon process and people in equal measures? And how could you ensure that this program is sustained on an ongoing basis? It is widely accepted that there is more to implementing TQM than simply reworking a few processes and advising employees of your intentions. Organizations must cultivate the right mindset throughout their workforce and ensure that this mode of thinking is promoted on a continual basis. In short, culture and leadership are crucial. This has been well documented as far back as 1951, yet there has been little empirical research to measure just how big a role these two elements play.

The purpose of this paper is to estimate the relative efficiencies of banks of the Indian domestic banking sector by employing various models of data envelopment analysis (DEA) using the panel data of the recent decade (2008–2017). The paper provides a comparative analysis of these models based on the efficiency outputs. It compares the performance of banks based on their ownership and sizes and studies the decade-long trend of productivity using Malmquist indices.

This paper estimates overall technical, pure technical and scale efficiencies of 21 public sector banks and 17 private banks. It compares the descriptive statistics of efficiency estimates found out through 18 different DEA models and compares them using two non-parametric statistical tests. It studies the difference in efficiencies based on ownership and size by applying the same statistical tests. It employs the Malmquist index method to study the technological and technical progress in the banks’ productivity over the decade of FY 2008–FY 2017.

During FY 2016–2017, only 9 out of 38 banks were overall technically efficient with the whole sample having a mean overall technical inefficiency of 5 percent with scale inefficiency contributing more than pure technical inefficiency. The comparative study ascertains that private sector and public sector banks (PSBs) possess efficiencies that are similar based on super-efficiency slack-based model – variable returns to scale and non-oriented, a model that the authors argue to be the most suitable for the real-life business banking scenarios whereas the private sector banks possess better efficiency than the PSBs. The Malmquist indices prove that private sector banks have a higher increase in productivity based on both technological progress and efficiency improvements whereas PSBs had a loss of efficiency and comparatively less improvement in technology.

This study has a limitation of choosing a single model of inputs and outputs. Improved insights can be drawn by employing more models based on different inputs and outputs. Further, relevance of each input and output can be examined using a regression-based feedback mechanism (Ouenniche and Carrales, 2018). The influence of environmental factors on the efficiencies can be studied using second-stage regression models and the relationship between efficiency scores and financial ratios can be examined.

This study is based on the panel data of the recent decade (2008–2017) and provides insights into the efficiency scenario of the Indian banking industry and how it changed over the past decade, to the leadership of banks, the banking regulators and the policy makers. The comparative analysis of DEA models based on a sample of Indian banks is first of its kind in the Indian context and helps the researchers to select an appropriate model and delve into further research on the same.

Quality empowering management is to the future of renewed worldwide competitiveness what quality control, participative management programmes and zero defects were to quality improvement. Empowerment holds that promoting employee involvement empowers workers to perform as whole, thinking human beings. Empowerment is the glue by which the elements of customer focus, quality process and products, continuous improvements, self‐managing teams, quality measurement, and utilization of the total workforce abilities are held together. Self‐managing teams are one of the major keys in the innovative organization to solving complex problems, increasing productivity, and heightening creativity. For most organizations and managers, quality empowering management is a new responsibility and a radical change in style of management and change in culture requiring new methods and systems.

In order to survive and thrive in today’s global economy, firms of all sizes must be able to use information as a competitive weapon. Manufacturing firms must be able to receive and process customer orders, schedule shop orders, and place purchase orders efficiently to be effective members of their supply chain. Information technology can be used to facilitate the exchange of order information between business functions and supply chain members. Two information technologies that are used for this information exchange are enterprise resource planning (ERP) and electronic commerce (e‐commerce). This article discusses the results of a survey of Midwestern manufacturers on their current and future use of and investment in information technology to support their supply chain activities. The results of the study show that there is a difference in the use of and investment in information technology between small/medium manufacturers and large manufacturers. Large manufacturers are placing more emphasis on supply chain technologies than small manufacturers. Manufacturers’ investment in information technologies for the supply chain were found to lag those for the manufacturing/operations function. The results also show that use of e‐commerce is greater than the use of ERP.

A systems perspective of waste management allows an integrated approach not only to the five basic functional elements of waste management itself (generation, reduction, collection, recycling, disposal), but to the problems arising at the interfaces with the management of energy, nature conservation, environmental protection, economic factors like unemployment and productivity, etc. This monograph separately describes present practices and the problems to be solved in each of the functional areas of waste management and at the important interfaces. Strategies for more efficient control are then proposed from a systems perspective. Systematic and objective means of solving problems become possible leading to optimal management and a positive contribution to economic development, not least through resource conservation. India is the particular context within which waste generation and management are discussed. In considering waste disposal techniques, special attention is given to sewage and radioactive wastes.

Examines the recent turnaround in UK productivity compared to other leading industrial nations and whether the improvement is sustainable, with reference to trade unions. Considers the policies required to further improve productivity, the distribution of the benefits among shareholders and workers, and wider community concerns such as the environment. Concludes that there has been no UK “economic miracle” in the 1980s, and that the signs for continued growth are not encouraging.

The paper is a proof of concept (PoC) intervention study aimed for developing performance management (PM) practices in manufacturing small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) with the longer-term aim enabling the SMEs to improve their productivity. The intervention was designed and deployed by a collaborative quartet of academics, management consultants, accountancy firm and a commercial bank manager.

The paper firstly musters a set of initialising PM practices aligned to productivity improvement. These are utilised to design a knowledge transfer intervention for deployment with a set of manufacturing SMEs incorporating some associated productivity tools. The evaluation of the intervention utilised a case study approach founded on a logic model of the intervention to assess the development of the PM practices.

The intervention contributed to a partial development of the mustered practices and the productivity diagnostic based on the multi-factor productivity (MFP) abstraction and a data extraction protocol had the strongest impact. The study revealed the importance of the three interlaced factors: Depth of engagement, feedback opportunities and the intervention gradient (the increase of independent action from the participating SME's and the diminishment of the external intervention effort).

The case study is based on a limited number of individual SME's, and within just the manufacturing sector.

SME businesses will require a more sustained programme of interventions than this pilot to develop PM capability, and depth of engagement within the SME is critical. Professional stakeholders can be utilised in recruitment of firms for intervention programmes. Business can start developing PM capability prior to PMS implementation using the tools from this programme.

The productivity diagnostic tool, based on a synthesis of MFP and the performance pyramid, an array of potential initialising practices for PM capability and discovery of potential mechanisms for PM practice development.

While past IT investment research has looked at a number of important factors, one issue that needs to be resolved in supply chain IT is the ability of different types of software to improve a firm's productivity or sales. Specifically, the purpose of this paper is to investigate which factors influence the number and types of supply chain bolt‐ons systems that are used by companies to improve system functionality.

In total, 2,000 questionnaires and personalized cover letters were mailed to qualified individuals who were selected from APICS's active membership and employed in manufacturing firms in the USA and 187 useful responses (a 9.3 per cent return rate) were obtained.

The results were encouraging and they indicated the use of bolt‐ons were most common in large firms, firms with defined plans and objectives, firms with existing ERP systems, and firms who believe that the application of best practices is of maximum importance. Most importantly, Bolt‐on usage did not seem to be impacted by recent sales or productivity increases, but was instead a result of a critical need in the supply chain.

This research used a single survey methodology and all measures were collected at single point in time. This may limit its generalizability to all time periods and conditions.

Investment in supply chain IT like all strategic initiatives does not end with its installation and implementation but requires continuous improvement. Bolt‐ons seem to be one way firms customize their systems to optimize performance and develop a competitive advantage.

The paper employed a survey study approach to examine investments in Bolt‐on technologies used to supplement and/or augment ERPs across a wide variety of companies. This is a particular novel research area because much of the existing ERP research has focused almost exclusively on ERP deployment and integration with other systems; while relatively little research has focused on those key Bolt‐on systems that might be needed to enhance ERP systems once they have been installed.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the potential impact that collaboration between East and West could have on sustainable development. Greater emphasis in this paper will be placed on the benefit that developing countries gain from building collaborative relations with the West. Obtaining access to knowledge and technology will enable developing countries to speed up the process of socio-economic transformation and sustain development. Developing countries can leapfrog by making use of the existing knowledge in the West.

This paper provides descriptive assessment of the relationship between East and West to foster growth and sustain development. The paper uses newly developed ideas to build capacity for knowledge transfer to create linkages and accelerate the process of economic growth. The approach to knowledge-based development requires the creation of an enabling environment driven by skills, innovation, institutions and ICT.

The paper suggests that knowledge transfer enables developing countries to sustain development. Access to global/western knowledge allows developing countries to diversify their economic structure and increase productivity. Technological learning and knowledge absorption permit these countries to leapfrog by surpassing several stages in their development.

Information in this paper provides insight into the merits of the new economy and the potential benefits that developing countries can obtain from participating in the global economy. Indigenous knowledge and local innovation are important for local development, which can be enhanced through technology transfer and knowledge dissemination.

Unlike traditional economic theories in which capital and labor provide the main inputs in production, this paper discusses a new approach to development where knowledge, skills and innovation represent the main forces behind growth. The paper explores new ideas to generate linkage and sustain development.