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This purpose of the paper is to highlight the disturbing incidence of disengagement in the modern workplace. By highlighting why professionals leave their jobs, the author aims to change how managers think about motivation. Only then can they get the best out of their staff and retain their best employees.

The author uses his own experience of performance coaching, management, and leading without formal authority. The author critically evaluates classic motivational theories, preferring some more enlightened and recent research.

People leave managers not jobs. Disengagement results from faulty assumptions about what drives today’s professionals. Personal values or emotive needs matter much more than “extrinsic” rewards such as money and promotion. So the problems will not be solved by “making the carrots crunchier and the sticks sharper”; a new mindset is needed. While powerful and more or less universal motivators exist, every individual is different. However, uncovering what really matters can be very straightforward indeed. There is a need to be proactive and curious about what really drives the staff rather than wait till the best people tell the staff at the exit interview.

The author uses a real-life example to show what really happens under the surface. The author shows what is involved in adopting a “higher level” mindset and the resulting approach that might be taken with the people. Motivation mastery can be easier than what is thought about.

The aim of this series of papers is to offer key insights from eminent professors or practitioners within the field of Operations Management. This is the first of a series of interviews with “Operations Masters” and future contributions will include a range of inputs from manufacturing and services, private and public sectors. This series will provide an important contribution to the strategic importance of operations management in a range of settings.

An interview with Professor Terry Hill, Emeritus Fellow at the University of Oxford, UK and a leading international figure in the field of operations management and operations strategy, conducted by Professor Steve Brown, Editor‐in‐Chief of International Journal of Operations & Production Management.

Terry Hill explains that his motive when writing his seminal book Manufacturing Strategy in 1985, which built on the work of Wickham Skinner, was to fill the gaps in both the language and concepts that comprise operations strategy, which would enable operations executives to exercise their strategic roles more fully. He goes on to describe the challenges that still exist in getting operations strategy onto the agenda in most companies and in the classroom. Finally Terry Hill makes recommendations for research which would help to elevate the strategic importance of operations.

Professor Terry Hill is a leading international figure in the field of operations management and operations strategy. In this interview he offers many insights into how this field has developed, both in business and in academia and highlights some of the challenges faced, particularly if research is to have real value in business.

The purpose of this paper is to identify critical gaps in the conceptualization and interpretation of sustainability by investigating the postgraduate research (theses and dissertations) conducted with a reference to sustainability in Turkish higher education institutions and synthesizing the underlying themes and trends pertaining to sustainability issues in the local discourse.

The study adopts a mixed-method design. The sample (n=343) consists of the theses and dissertations conducted over a ten-year period in Turkish universities. Data analysis procedures include a quantitative investigation through numbers to address the level of value attached to postgraduate research on sustainable development; a content analysis on the focus and scope of each study to determine prevalent sustainability themes and dimensions frequently addressed in the studies; and a collocation analysis conducted on the texts of the studies to depict linguistic and cultural connotations of sustainable development in the local discourse and key terms that frequently collocate with sustainable development in the Turkish context.

Neither a sufficient number of direct references to sustainability nor a substantial increase in the number of studies throughout the decade is depicted. Only one-third of Turkish universities steer postgraduate research on sustainability, which is not evenly distributed to various institutions across the country. Three-quarters of the studies are conducted within economy-related and engineering-related programs. The social dimension of sustainability is under-researched. The topics tend to ply between environmental and economic edges. Turkey, as a word, is collocated frequently with the concepts of external debt, current deficit, energy, policy, and EU. Linguistically, the concept of sustainable development is predominantly associated with economic growth in the majority of the studies. Sustainability is contextualized mostly with making cities inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable and promoting inclusive and sustainable economic growth, employment, and decent work.

The value of the paper lies in the paucity of studies tracking the research initiatives taken on sustainability, assessing research trends in postgraduate programs of higher education institutions, and looking into a global concept from a local perspective in a developing country, Turkey.

This study aims to investigate the dispositions of early career teacher educators as young academics toward sustainability and accountability for sustainability issues. Through their interpretations, concerns, awareness and ownership of sustainability, the study portrays how a global phenomenon is articulated specifically within the local context of teachers colleges in Turkey.

The study was designed as a survey, and the data were collected through a cross-sectional online questionnaire. The sample (n = 72) was limited, through purposeful sampling, to early career teacher educators teaching and being trained in well-established Turkish teachers colleges to become prospective faculty members of newly founded teachers colleges across the country. The data were analyzed primarily through quantitative methods. For the analyses, STATA software was used to perform descriptive and inferential statistics.

The general results indicated that the participants were highly concerned about sustainability problems. However, their concerns were not reflected to the same degree on their perceived awareness and ownership of education for sustainable development (ESD). Hunger and poverty, loss of biodiversity, climate change and epidemic diseases were all perceived to be urgent more in the global context. On the other hand, unemployment, refugees and terrorism were perceived to be locally urgent problems. Different agencies within the community were addressed to be accountable for different types of sustainability problems. The accountability for economic, environmental and societal problems were mainly placed on governments. Additionally, individuals/families and educators were held more accountable for environmental issues, while corporations and super powers were held more accountable for economic issues. As for societal issues, educators, individuals/families and non-governmental organizations were addressed to be more responsible.

The significance of the study is mainly twofold. If sustainable development is conceptualized with a futuristic viewpoint that attaches a great importance to next generations' needs, focusing on the dispositions of early career teacher educators as young academics is a reasonable way of addressing the current gaps and eliminating the future inefficacies. Building on the assumption that ESD would remain imperfect without the commitment of teacher educators who have the potential to bring changes in educational systems and shape knowledge and skills of future teachers, in turn future generations; this study becomes even more valuable as it includes specifically the academicians in the field of teacher education.

There has been a growing call from within the operations management (OM) academic community for research of more managerial relevance. This has implied a greater emphasis on empirical research: surveys, cases, and action research. But in fact these types are quite different. However, the great majority of empirical OM work published is based on postal surveys and/or interviewing executives, where research method selection is made for reasons of practical convenience and academic expectation. Given the level of complexity involved in understanding the OM perspective of business issues then the emphasis should be placed on plant‐based research. Conducting research on‐site and investigation through the analysis of relevant data, issues, developments and events ensures relevance and a validity essential to making an impact on business practice. There are obstacles to increasing the amount of plant‐based research which is carried out, such as practical and personal difficulties, a mistaken concern over research rigour, and academic institutional inertia. Each of these needs to be overcome if OM research is to influence business practice more in the future than it has in the past.

The word “flexible”, when viewed in an industrial context, although accepted by users and suppliers equally, does not bear uniformity of meaning, as different types of flexibility require different manufacturing responses. Change can be capacity‐related, induced by customers or equipment‐related, and a manufacturing strategy may involve price, and/or speed and reliability of delivery. However, although types of flexibility may interrelate and conflict with one another, organisations must ensure that their investments produce the benefits appropriate to their markets.

Procurement is often perceived as a tactical rather than a strategic function. Such perceptions result from the way procurement is usually defined as beginning after a need has been identified. Procurement thus focuses on tactical decisions involving means rather than on strategic decisions involving ends. For procurement to become strategic, procurement professionals must be recognized as having legitimate leadership roles in determining organizational ends. The paper presents two conceptual frameworks to move procurement in this direction. The first-pragmatism-resolves the dichotomy between ends and means. The second-a conservator model of agency leadership-highlights the importance of promoting and maintaining public procurement's institutional integrity. Together, these may equip procurement professionals to adopt leadership roles in strategic organizational decision making.

Presents a framework to determine manufacturing planning and control system requirements that reflect differences in manufacturing strategy and process technology in a business. Manufacturing planning and control systems represent a critical part of the manufacturing infrastructure and support functions, and their design needs to be closely linked to decisions regarding a firm′s manufacturing strategy and choice of processes. Discusses examples of companies which have developed a good fit between their manufacturing planning and control systems and their manufacturing strategy in terms of the framework presented.

Examines quality strategies within the manufacturing strategy. Discusses how the difference and the relationship between order winning criteria and order qualifying criteria is crucial to the understanding of the role of quality in the manufacturing strategy. Asserts that a manufacturing strategy must fully support the market strategy. Emphasizes the need to sustain and improve quality. Concludes that as more companies achieve total quality, this moves them to strategies where quality is a qualifying criterion rather than an order winner. Asserts a strategy of using quality as a qualifying criterion can only be pursued when high levels of quality have been achieved. Contends the necessity to come to terms with this in order to meet the competitive challenges of the 1990s.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the role that pre-merger identification plays within a post-merger setting. Social Identity Theory (SIT) has conflicting reports on the role that pre-merger identification plays in post-merger integration. The current research explores a case study where enhancing pre-merger identification resulted in positive post-merger identification and intergroup relations; progressing knowledge in the field by analysing the contextual factors that facilitate this outcome.

The research follows a case study design applying integration method for the study of changes over time. Two sets of in-depth semi-structured interviews underwent content analysis to derive thematic findings. Case detail was also provided to frame the results.

Findings of the research showed that the integration strategy used to facilitate pre-merger ingroup identification reduced the perceived status differences between groups, moderately improved ingroup relations, and significantly improved intergroup relations.

For strategic planners involved in managing change during a merger, the findings provide an alternative integration strategy to be used within a joint-brand structure. The research also provides several analysis points that managers can use to design appropriate integration strategies.

The findings are important for the application of SIT to mergers and acquisitions, which commonly view pre-merger identification as a barrier to integration. The current study outlines the contextual factors which strengthen the relationship between pre-merger identity and post-merger identification.