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Reverse innovation plays an important role in the innovation catch-up by latecomer enterprise. With the development of economic globalization, reverse innovation of the latecomer enterprise research has received increased attention day by day. The purpose of this paper is to reveal the key success factors and the realization mechanism of reverse innovation of the latecomer engineering and technical services enterprise.

This paper adopts the grounded theory analysis as the research method, by analyzing the phenomenon, collating the results, mining through the systematic data and verifying the theory temporarily. Therefore, it is ideal for the research to build the theory by analyzing the phenomenon. Before the serious coding begins, the reliability of coders is first examined. Coders extract some sample as the first test sample; then, three coders code according to the description and requirements and calculate the coding results according to the formulas that the noted scholar Holsti has proposed. Then, the authors perform the coding three times that include open coding, axial coding and selective coding, and then, the key factor model of reverse innovation of the engineering and technical service enterprise is refined.

The investigation reveals that technology localization, connection with the international market and industrial chain integration are the key success factors of reverse innovation of the latecomer engineering and technological service enterprise. Meanwhile, the latecomer enterprise gives full attention to local comprehensive comparative advantage to carry out technology localization during the reverse innovation. The diversified international coupling mechanism is an important support for technology localization. The engineering and technical service enterprise needs to pay attention to the service chain of the vertical integration in the process of reverse innovation.

The paper enriches the related research of reverse innovation based on a new industry and provides management support for innovation catch-up of the latecomer enterprises that have a big technological gap when compared with the multi-national companies.

Service quality is a major determinant of business performance. Empirical evidence from the literature indicates that, to attain a high level of customer satisfaction, a high standard of service quality should be provided by the service provider. This study aims to examine the relationship between the perceived service quality and the indicators of client satisfaction with particular reference to engineering consultancy services in building projects.

A survey research approach was adopted using a semi-structured questionnaire as an instrument of data collection. The questionnaire survey formed the basis for the descriptive and inferential (Pearson correlation and multiple regression) statistics that were used to evaluate the relationship between engineering consultants’ service quality and clients’ satisfaction indicators.

The study identified 10 key technical indicators and 10 key managerial indicators for measuring client satisfaction. Statistical analysis shows a positive significant relationship between the perceived service quality and all the indicators of client satisfaction. The positive correlation values show that as perceived service quality increases, both technical and management indicators of client satisfaction equally increase.

The results offer opportunity for professional service providers to continuously develop the technical and management indicators, embrace personnel training and key into continuous professional development for better service quality.

Engineering service (ES) development, particularly with supplier co-creation, is nontrivial, and the literature has acknowledged the high relevance of uncertainty in this context. This study aims to investigate the relationship between different supplier co-creation modes (operationally independent [OI] and operationally dependent [OD]) and uncertainty criticality arising during ES development.

This study develops a conceptual framework of five uncertainty types by synthesizing the relevant literature from service management and new product development. This framework guided the empirical work of two in-depth case studies, describing uncertainty criticality in OI and OD supplier co-creation.

The findings show that environmental and organizational uncertainty were generally of high criticality for ES development independently of the supplier co-creation mode. Moreover, uncertainty criticality varied between the two cases, with higher criticality of technical and relational uncertainty as well as less resource uncertainty experienced by the focal organization in the OD case. This suggests that supplier co-creation constitutes an uncertainty reallocation.

Further research is needed to test the generalizability of the qualitative results through quantitative studies.

This research contributes to the service management literature by showing the varying uncertainty profiles manufacturing organizations face when engaging in different supplier co-creation modes. Furthermore, this research provides novel insights on ES development to the broader discussion on ES management.

Until the Loma Prieta earthquake of 17 October 1989, also known as the “World Series earthquake” or the “San Francisco earthquake,” many of us may have considered earthquakes a remote danger. But instantaneous television transmission from the interrupted World Series game and frightening images of the collapsed Cypress Viaduct and the burning Marina district transformed this incident from a distant disaster into a phenomenon that touched us all. The Loma Prieta earthquake was followed in December 1990 by the inaccurate but widely publicized New Madrid earthquake prediction. Despite its inaccuracy, this prediction alerted the public to the fact that the largest earthquake ever to have occurred in the United States occurred not in California or Alaska, but in Missouri, and that a large earthquake could occur there again. Americans are discovering that few places are immune to the possibility of an earthquake.

It is all too easy in the hectic world of business to get too involved with the day‐to‐day managing of processes and events. When this happens it is difficult to see the wood for the trees and the automatic pilot syndrome takes over. This does not suggest that you do not know what you are doing ‐ on the contrary you are probably as switched on to whatever activity you are managing as anyone could be. What you could be missing, however, is the explanation as to why you are doing it. If this sounds familiar to you, what might be needed is a detached period from your work. By this I mean stay on the high ground for a while so you can get an overview of what you are doing and, more importantly, why you are doing it. How many managers, I wonder, get the opportunity to question what they are doing? If you allow yourself to slip into complacency then you and your organization will soon lose competitive advantage.

Nowadays, diversity management in business organizations becomes so imperative in a time-sensitive business. However, diversity should not be measured as a static number. To better understand the fast-changing terrain, the paper aims to strongly propose using the tracking signal method to dynamically monitor the efficiency performance in regard to the future of diversity and best practices. This will allow diversity to play a more strategic role in cultivating sustainable business growth.

The paper employs the tracking signal, widely used to monitor the performance of a forecasting model, with some extension to dynamically monitor the technical efficiency due to its ability in alarming out-of-control signals.

The approach is considered as a quantitative, objective and reasonable evaluation system because it can quickly alert employees with inferior performance and promote those with persistently outstanding performance. It also provides managers the right timing to find assignable causes affecting their workers' performance. Most importantly, it can be unsophisticatedly implemented in many aspects of efficiency evaluation for assisting organizations to improve their competitive power through efficiency gains and well expedite their broadly managerial decisions.

The majority of previous researches aggregate multi-dimensional efficiencies by different weighting strategies into a single index before making their judgments. These approaches mainly focus on the first phase of the decision-making procedure by considering the efficiency in a static-state. As efficiency is time-sensitive, it should be evaluated dynamically. Thus, serving as the second phase of the procedure, the method is a complement of previous researches.

The modelling landscape experiences a rich proliferation of modelling language, or metamodel. The emergence of cross-disciplinary disciplines, such as enterprise engineering and service engineering, necessitates a multi-perspective approach to traverse the component from strategic level to technological aspect. This paper aims to find a unifying structure of metamodels introduced by academics and industries.

A grounded approach is taken to define the structure by collating the metamodels to form an emerging structure. Metamodels were collected from a literature survey from several interrelated disciplines: software engineering, system engineering, enterprise architecture, service engineering, business process management and financial accounting.

The result suggests seven stereotypes of metamodel, characterized by its label: goal, enterprise, business model, service, process, software and system. The aspect of “process” holds a central role in connecting all other aspect in the modelling continuum. Service engineering can be viewed as an alternative abstraction of enterprise engineering in containing the concepts of “business model”, “capability”, “value”, “interaction”, “process” and “software”.

Metamodel collection was performed to emphasize on representativeness rather than comprehensiveness, in which old and unpopular metamodel were disregarded unless it offer unique characteristic not yet represented in the collection. Owing to its bottom-up approach, the paper is not intended to identify a gap in metamodel offering.

This paper produces a structure of metamodel landscape in a graphical format to illustrate correlation between metamodels in which evolutive patterns of metamodel proliferation can be observed. The produced structure can serve as map in metamodel continuum.

This paper describes the first steps in a process of service re‐engineering – business process re‐engineering (BPR) – in the information services division (ISD) of the University of Salford.

This paper begins by describing the recent changes within HE and the impact of these changes to support services. The structure of ISD (and customer services within that) in the University of Salford is described, and the need for process change is analysed. The CRISP (Customer Resolution and Information Services Project) teams are then described, as are the principles behind the planned process mapping exercise. Finally, change management issues and customer relationships are discussed, as is our vision of a learning organisation.

The ISD will re‐engineer its key processes providing a customer‐focused service with resources directed specifically to where they are required. The process has already met challenges, even though its scope is just being defined. Those challenges include the complexity of the cultures that will need to be accounted for, the threats of a loss of momentum due to the need for thoroughness and fairness, and the need for planned communication and change management.

The scale of BPR being undertaken at the University of Salford is unmatched in the UK. This paper will begin the thought process for similar services who wish to focus what they do and the resources they use in providing that service.

Within the service sectors, Knowledge Intensive Business Services (KIBS) play an important role in local and regional economies as sources of competitive advantages and providing knowledge-intensive inputs to the business process of small and medium-sized enterprises. This study aims to analyze the changes in financial performance of KIBS industry in Italy over the period from 2012 to 2017.

This paper examines the efficiency of the KIBS firms by applying data envelopment analysis (DEA) to compute the Malmquist Productivity Index for the period under investigation. The DEA-based Malmquist productivity analysis is applied at firm level using a sample consisting 1.674 companies, representative of the Italian KIBS sector and related to three different NACE activity code (72-computing services; 73-research and development; 74 other professional business activities). The efficiency measures are then used to characterize KIBS firm financial performance through the analysis of average productivity patterns grouped by Italian geographical regions. The Malmquist productivity measures are decomposed into two components: efficiency change and technical change index. The overall analysis is coupled with a financial ratio analysis approach, selecting return on equity (ROE) and leverage ratio as descriptor to validate the results and better characterize differences in efficiency patterns among geographic-based groups of KIBS companies.

Over the period 2015-2017, the results show that the average annual growth of the overall Malmquist productivity index was positive in nine Italian regions that represent only 17 per cent of the total KIBS firms selected. On the other side, a decrease of the average performance measure is observed for the five geographic areas that contribute to 75.7 per cent of the total sample. In general, the technological change component, as a measure of innovation, strongly limits the productivity growth behavior of KIBS industry for all geographic regions. The use of selected financial ratio does not provide additional insight to the performance investigation and further in-depth studies are needed to better evaluate the correlation between average productivity results and regional business dynamics.

The study investigates the applicability of DEA-based Malmquist indices to the analysis of the productivity behavior of KIBS industry at regional level. It will be of value to provide first evidence to the policymakers to understand industry growth pattern in time frame selected and relate them to additional business factors to detect specific industry constraints.

The analysis in this paper contributes to the existing body of knowledge on industry performance measurement by applying specific analytical techniques to the productivity of Italian KIBS companies. The paper also contributes to the limited body of academic literature investigating KIBS industry at national level proposing a methodological framework that constitutes a first attempt to track average productivity behavior at regional level.

MAPNA Operation and Maintenance Company was established in 2003 to provide long-term services in the energy sector in Iran. This company delivered comprehensive solutions including operation and maintenance, overhaul and repair, commissioning, performance test and training in the fields of power and oil and gas. By 2021, the company had provided long-term operation and maintenance services in more than thirty power plants in Iran and had implemented more than 200 projects worth more than 300 million USD. MAPNA Operation and Maintenance Company believed that a sustainable and responsible management could be achieved through integrated management of the economic, social and environmental impacts of the business. This approach became more apparent when the company provided services countrywide, and they interacted with a wide range of stakeholders. In this context, efforts were made to create common values for both the organization and society. Some of the company’s long-term projects were in less developed areas of the country. One of the social issues in those regions was creating jobs for jobless people and preparing them to work in order to have a better life. The company policy in providing manpower for such projects was to employ indigenous manpower, training them and creating sustainable jobs for them. After hiring local workforce, the company provided professional and general training programs to improve their skills and knowledge. Also, the company was committed to prepare a healthy and safe work environment for employees to learn and comply with ethical and social norms and develop a sustainable environmental attitude by increasing the efficiency of using natural resources and controlling environmental pollution. Work-life balance programs were implemented to ensure a productive presence in the workplace and to maintain a healthy and meaningful family relationship for employees. This case aims to elaborate more on the challenges of the sustainable activities of the long-term projects that MAPNA Operation and Maintenance planned and implemented in terms of its corporate social responsibility and social entrepreneurship specifically in less developed areas.