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The purpose of this paper is to analyze the determinants of the performance of regional industrial technology development programs among the regional strategic industrial development program that the central government and Daegu metropolitan city jointly promoted between 2004 and 2012. Specifically, in this research, the authors are trying to identify the effects of R&D capabilities and technical development tasks on technological and managerial performance.

The dependent variables of this study are technical and economic performance. Technical performance, product and process innovation, economic performance, sales and export increases were measured using five-point Likert scales. The authors added the contribution of sales through technology development to economic performance. The independent variable is the company’s R&D capability, measured by the number of R&D staff compared to the average total number of employees from 2004 to 2012. The characteristics of the technology development tasks were measured by technical characteristics, market characteristics and collaborative research types. The technological characteristics were measured by seven factors, including technological change, technical difficulty, potential in commercialization, competition between domestic and foreign competitors, difficulty in introducing overseas technology and the technological gap. Market characteristics were largely divided into complexity, dynamics and competitiveness. The types of collaborative research were divided into whether or not there were collaborative research with the participation of large corporations. The control variables are firm size (number of employees) and firm age. Regression analysis was used to analyze the determinants of performance, and a difference analysis was conducted to determine the effect of collaborative research on performance.

The main determinants of the regional industrial technology development program performance are the characteristics of the technology development task rather than the internal R&D capability; moreover, the technical characteristics, complexity of the developed product market and participation of large corporations had significant effects on R&D capability. The R&D capacity of firms in internal R&D capacity had a significant effect only on the improvement of technology development ability. Therefore, R&D capacity, which is the main determinant of technology innovation, did not have a significant effect on the performance of short-term technology development tasks. Technological change, technological difficulty, competition between domestic and foreign competitors and the technological gap had positive effects on performance, excluding sales contributions. In addition, the complexity of the developed product market such as the diversification of demand, competitive product and sales distribution channels had positive influences on the performance of technology development programs, unlike dynamics and competitiveness. In this study, the authors cannot confirm the effect of collaborative research on the performance of the technology development programs, but they confirmed that collaborative research involving large corporations had a positive influence on performance.

The results of the analysis of the determinants of regional industrial technology development programs suggest some implications in the future evaluation of these regional industrial technology development programs. It is necessary to review the application qualification and merit, advance review of the business plans and confirmation, an examination of the research results and performance of the applicants and a review of the technology and market situation of the project. For this, the authors suggest that the written review from the relevant technical experts be submitted to the evaluation committees. Also, when establishing regional industrial development programs, they should be evaluated thoroughly, including detailed information and contents about the technical and market characteristics of the local industry.

This research is one of the first to investigate the achievements of R&D support programs among regional industrial development programs in Korea. The results of this study can substantially contribute to the development and implementation of the R&D support policies of the central and local governments. Furthermore, the findings suggest guidelines for improving the performance of R&D support programs in the future. A theoretical model for enhancing the efficiency of government R&D support programs may be established, and an empirical analysis may be conducted to provide practical and academic implications for further research.

Poor maintenance management leads to non-negligible economic, environmental and social impacts and obstacles to the sustainable manufacturing paradigm. Studies evaluating maintenance impacts on sustainability underline growing interest in the topic, but reports on the industrial field are lacking. Therefore, this paper investigates the industrial environment and the indicators that manufacturing companies use for measuring their maintenance impacts.

In this pilot survey study, several stakeholders of production enterprises in the south of Italy were interviewed to unveil the spread of the measurement of maintenance impacts on sustainability and the indicators used by those companies.

The interview results showed a low level of awareness among stakeholders about maintenance impacts on sustainability. Maintenance stakeholders are mainly focused on technical and economic factors, whereas environmental, quality and safety stakeholders are becoming more aware of maintenance impacts on environmental and social factors. However, both groups need guidelines to define sustainability indicators to assess such impacts.

This exploratory study allowed us to investigate the current situation in industrial organisations and achieve the first variegated and diversified vision of the awareness of company stakeholders on maintenance impacts on the sustainability of several business functions. This paper provides a valuable contribution to “maintenance and sustainability” research area in production contexts and sheds light on non-negligible maintenance impacts on sustainability, providing preliminary insights on the topic and an effective basis for defining future research opportunities. Moreover, this study enables increased awareness among internal and external manufacturing company stakeholders on the role of maintenance in sustainable production.

The purpose of this study is to empirically test how problem-solving lean practices, along with leaders as learning facilitators in an action learning approach, can be transferred from a production context to a knowledge work context for the purpose of becoming a learning organization while enhancing performance. This is important to study because many organizations struggle to enhance efficiency in the short term while still trying to be long-term learning oriented (i.e. learning organization development).

The authors draw on theory on learning interventions to show how lean practices for problem-solving can foster learning and help an organization to become adaptive. This study’s subject is a non-production department of 100 employees at the LEGO corporation. The authors applied survey results from a natural experiment lasting 18 months between a pre-measurement survey and a post-measurement survey. The results were compared to a control department of 50 employees who were not exposed to the lean practices intervention. The authors’ focus was on the individual level as individuals have different perceptions of lean practices, performance, and learning.

Using repeated-measures tests, difference-in-difference regressions analyses, and structural equation models, the authors find that a package of contemporary lean practices for problem-solving, along with leaders who function as learning facilitators, significantly improved learning organization dimensions while also enhancing efficiency and quality and that learning organizations positively mediate the relationship between the lean intervention and quality-related performance, while efficiency is directly affected by the lean interventions. Data from LEGO's key performance indicators (KPIs), benefit trackers, on-site observations and more than 40 interviews with managers provided results that were consistent with the survey data. A detailed description of the lean practices implemented is provided to inspire future implementations in non-operations environments and to assist educators.

The authors contribute to the learning literature by showing that a learning-to-learn approach to lean management can serve as an active and deliberate intervention in helping an organization becoming a learning organization as perceived by the individual organizational members. The authors also add to the lean literature by showing how a learning approach to lean, as used by LEGO, can positively affect short-term efficiency and quality and create a foundation for a longer-term competitive advantage (i.e. a learning organization) in a non-production context. By contrast, most of the lean literature streams treat efficiency separately from a learning organization and mainly examine lean in a production context.

The extant literature shows three research streams on lean, learning, and performance. The authors built on these streams by trying to emphasize both learning and efficiency. Prior research has not empirically tested whether and how the application of problem-solving lean practices combined with leaders as learning facilitators helps to create a comprehensive learning organization while enhancing performance in a non-production context.

Previous research has identified associations between quality management and employee health. This study's purpose was to (1) examine those associations in a public healthcare organisation and (2) explore and describe the association between digitalisation and employee health.

An online questionnaire including indices to measure quality management values, employee health and digitalisation was answered by 118 managers in Swedish public healthcare. Correlation analysis was used to analyse the data. Based on the survey results, 12 qualitative, in-depth interviews were conducted with healthcare managers.

The findings show that employee health is associated with quality management and digitalisation. Categories were defined to describe the managers' views of the relationship between digitalisation and health.

Causality was not explicitly tested and cannot be assumed. However, the results strengthen the body of research showing that quality management is related to employee health, and associations between health and digitalisation were identified.

The findings and model should be helpful for healthcare managers in a digitalising environment who aim to preserve or enhance employee health whilst ensuring high service quality.

The results were used to create an integrated conceptual model depicting the association between quality, digitalisation and health. This association has not previously been studied.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the rise and the future of urban leisure format (ULF), i.e. local seasonal short-lived and repeatable small-scale place-time-based staging urban leisure experiences which become the focus of recreation and tourism development in many cities. It aims to analyse the structure of the ULF by identifying its main features and also to propose the future developments of the concept.

The study is based on the experience economy principles. It develops the models for structured experiences/experienscape by adding the analogy with television programme formats to propose the general logic of constructing, organising and packetizing urban leisure experiences that are multiplied effectively to other urban time-spaces.

The ULF’s future potential lies in its ability to adopt local components, i.e. people and urban resources, to global trends using a structured experiences/experience logic which makes the ULF formattable, i.e. with the capacity to get informally standardised, then repeated and adapted to other cities’ contexts.

The paper provides a conceptual framework for formatting the leisure events and places under the framework of the structured experience, will be carefully adapted to the micro-local level, i.e. community activities sphere. The ULF is a theoretical concept and needs empirical research to verify its validity.

The ULF provides urban managers with a framework for replicating, multiplying and adapting urban leisure events and sites within the structured experiences (SE) designing framework.

The study contributes to the scientific discussion on the experience economy by introducing the ULF concept which can be adapted to various urban conditions.

As a Quality Management (QM) framework, the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) Excellence Model has stakeholder management at its core. In EFQM (2012), based on which assessments were made until 2021, “creating a sustainable future” was a fundamental principle, but how it translated to a Sustainability Orientation and delivered to stakeholders remains questionable. This study aims to investigates the Sustainability Orientation within EFQM (2012) and its associations with Results for stakeholders.

Longitudinal assessments of recognized-for-excellence organizations by a partner of EFQM are considered. Using factor analysis, scores on the sub-criteria that defined “creating a sustainable future” are investigated, and a Sustainability Orientation is inferred. Panel regressions and structural equation modeling assess the correlations between Sustainability Orientation and Results. A qualitative analysis follows, where sustainability reports from role-models within this population are text mined to examine whether and how they reflected the guidance in EFQM (2012) concerning “creating a sustainable future”.

Direct and indirect positive associations between the Sustainability Orientation implied by EFQM (2012) and stakeholder-performance are confirmed. Yet, inferences from text mining of reported priorities of role-models of excellence illustrate that EFQM (2012) might have driven different strategies towards sustainability.

Despite conceptualizations that the EFQM model embeds a Sustainability Orientation, to the best of the researchers’ knowledge, its existence and likely impact remain to be examined. By combining longitudinal statistical analysis, structural equation models and text mining, consistent insights on the link between Sustainability Orientation and organizational performance are obtained.

Based on the main studies presented in the literature, this work aims to examine the level of student satisfaction towards the on-campus accommodation service provided by an Italian university. Notably, the objectives of the study are twofold: (1) to examine the mediating role of student satisfaction on the relationship between university on-campus accommodation service quality and word-of-mouth and (2) to determine whether there is any significant difference in students' satisfaction towards on-campus accommodation in terms of gender and the halls of residence.

The study is based on the results of a survey carried out through an online questionnaire by 381 students living on campus at the University of Urbino.

The findings revealed that the quality perceived by university students in relation to individual services had a positive impact on their general satisfaction towards the halls of residence experience.

The study presents some limitations such as lack of temporal comparisons, a focus on specific service quality items and the fact that it refers to a single Italian university.

The findings of this study will help the management of public universities to improve the quality of services in their halls of residence for the satisfaction of their students.

To the authors' knowledge, there have been no previous studies about on-campus accommodation service quality conducted in Italy. The study contributes to enrich the service quality literature, confirming both that the sum of the quality of individual elements is not as the overall satisfaction and the outcome intention of positive WOM depends not only on service quality attributes, but also from an overall evaluation of satisfaction.

Health risks associated with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) have severely affected the financial stability of airline companies globally. Recapturing financial stability following this crisis depends heavily on these companies’ ability to attain efficient and productive operations. This study uses several empirical approaches to examine key factors contributing to carriers sustaining high productivity prior to, during and after a major recession. Findings suggest, regardless of economic conditions, that social distancing which requires airline companies in the Asia Pacific region to fly with a significant percentage of unfilled seats weakens the performance of those companies. Furthermore, efficient operations do not guarantee the avoidance of productivity declines, especially during a recession.

This study aims to empirically investigate the effects of both soft and hard quality management (QM) on innovation and organizational performance. It also examines the mediating role of hard QM, administrative innovation and technical innovation on the relationship between soft QM and organizational performance in higher education (HE).

The approach of this study is quantitative. The data used to test the hypotheses were obtained through online questionnaire sent to the academic staff of public universities in Naples (Italy). The hypothesized relationships are tested with data collected from 356 respondents by using the partial least squares structural equation modeling technique (PLS-SEM).

The results show that quality practices improve innovation and organizational performance, while innovation positively impacts organizational performance. The findings also indicate that soft QM affects organizational performance directly and indirectly through hard QM. Hard QM and innovation show a partial sequential mediating effect on soft QM-performance relationship

In order to implement quality management properly in HE, directors need to recognize the different roles that soft and hard QM can have on innovation and organizational performance. It is important that higher education institutions (HEIs) allocate resources to establish both types of QM practices to achieve the effectiveness of the whole QM system.

Despite the existence of numerous studies on the relationship between QM, innovation and organizational performance in manufacturing and services, studies conducted in higher education are still few. This is one of the earliest studies that adopt the multidimensional approach of QM in HE which could help directors understand the interdependencies and different roles of soft and hard quality practices.

Farmers' adaptation strategies in agricultural production are required to minimise the negative impact of climate change on a nation's food production in developing countries. Based on the panel data of the provincial level in China from 2000 to 2017, this study aims to analyse the changing climate over recent years and farmers' adaptation strategy in terms of cropping in agricultural production.

This study uses Simpson's diversity index (SDI) to measure the degree of crop diversity planted by farmers and evaluate the influence of climate change on farmers' cropping strategy using the fixed-effect model. Further, the authors estimate the impact of farmers' cropping strategy on their economic performances in two aspects including yields and technical efficiency of crops.

The empirical results show that the overall climate appears a warming trend. Different from farmers in some other countries, Chinese farmers tend to adopt a more specialised cropping strategy which can significantly improve the technical efficiency and yields of crops in agriculture. In addition, as a moderating role, the specialised cropping can help farmers to alleviate the negative impact of climate change on technical efficiency of their crops.

First, previous studies showed that the changing climate influenced farmers' adaptation strategies, while most studies focussed on multiple adaptation strategies from the farm-level perspective rather than cropping strategy from the nation-level perspective. Second, the present study investigates how the cropping strategy affects the economic performance (in terms of the technical efficiency and crop yields) of agricultural production. Third, the stochastic frontier analysis method is used to estimate the technical efficiency. Fourth, this study explores the moderating effect between farmers' cropping strategy and technical efficiency by introducing an interaction item of SDI and accumulated temperature.