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The purpose of this paper is to further clarify the link between the theoretical and practical/real-life implications of a seminal topic in the strategic operations management field: Wickham Skinner’s strategic trade-offs model. This will help researchers, practitioners and students to realize the “everyday life” consequences of this highly influential model.

A theoretical analysis is made of previous research dealing with the strategic trade-offs model. Building on these investigations, a Popperian approach is used to logically develop the model, and the authors demonstrate how it can be empirically tested.

Previous investigations on Skinner’s model mainly focus on trade-offs between competitive capabilities (e.g. cost, quality, delivery) at the firm level. This paper demonstrates that the implications of this model necessarily should include consideration of the strategic trade-offs between the competitive characteristics of products/services that practitioners, students and the general public can observe.

While previous investigations have provided necessary clarifications, no paper has addressed the issue of the existence of strategic trade-offs between the competitive characteristics of products/services. This paper offers guidelines for researchers and practitioners on the way that the strategic trade-offs model can be conceptualized, understood and tested.

This paper focuses on Ṣukūk issuance determinants in Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. Given the dual characteristic of debt and equity of Ṣukūk as well as their unique benefits of social responsibility, the author questions whether the theories of capital structure, the trade-off and the pecking order are able to well explain the Ṣukūk issuance.

First, the author verifies these theories using capital structure determinants and regresses the Ṣukūk change on these determinants. Second, the author tests the trade-off theory with the target debt model and third, verifies the pecking order theory using the fund flow deficit model.

The empirical results show that capital structure determinants fail to explain both theories. The author confirms that the Ṣukūk change is significatively linked to the deviation from a Ṣukūk target. So, issuing firms balance the marginal costs of Ṣukūk and their benefits of religiosity and social responsibility toward a target debt. The author finds no evidence of the pecking order theory.

This study contributes to corporate finance theory and corporate social responsibility. It verifies if capital structure theories proved in conventional financing can well explain Islamic bonds issuance given their social responsibility benefits.

Managers and investors would pay attention to the social factors explaining Ṣukūk issuance in their finance and investment decisions. They would be enhanced to use this financing tool knowing its social unique benefits. This also should encourage governments to enhance this socially responsible financing. Rating agencies would be motivated to evaluate Ṣukūk and firms would improve the quality and relevance of disclosure to get the best rating.

The author highlights the social factors explaining Ṣukūk issuance and enhances corporate social responsibility (CSR).

The author extends the few literature testing capital structure theories for Islamic bonds and highlights the specific social responsible features of Ṣukūk that would bridge their issuance to capital structure theories. So the author enhances the concept of Islamic CSR. Tying capital structure theories to CSR would also help developing Islamic finance theory as a unique social responsible framework.

Extant manufacturing strategy research dichotomizes the trade‐off model and the cumulative model, but fails to explain each strategic result. The purpose of this paper is to propose four key antecedents of a trade‐off versus a cumulative model by manufacturing business units (MBUs), and in turn, their association with business performance.

The authors first review literature pertaining to the history and major themes of manufacturing strategy. Next, the authors present a theoretical model with explanations of the methodology and research design used. The model is empirically tested, and conclusions, managerial implications, and future research opportunities that stem from this research effort are provided.

Strategic time orientation, as well as manufacturing practices of supply chain integration intensity and advanced manufacturing technology, are empirically found to be associated with MBUs' combinative competitive capabilities. More specifically, manufacturers following these practices are more apt to realize higher levels combinative capabilities, as depicted by the cumulative model.

The paper shows that these manufacturing practices may extend the time within which the MBU reaches its capability frontiers, and therefore, increase the odds that it can exploit its current resources. Moreover, MBU size negatively moderates the relationship between advanced manufacturing technology and the cumulative model.

The purpose of this paper is to test the integrated model of operations strategy as proposed by Schmenner and Swink to explain whether firms trade‐off or accumulate capabilities, taking into account their positions relative to their asset and operating frontiers.

The four major airlines based in Australia were studied. The paper is based on longitudinal data obtained from secondary sources. The four operations capabilities cost, quality, delivery and flexibility, and asset and operating frontiers, were all measured with proxy variables.

The study provides some support for the integrated model. Firms do appear to trade‐off capabilities when their asset and operating frontiers are close to each other. Firms show signs of accumulation when the asset frontiers are expanding significantly over time. There is indirect evidence that firms could be accumulating capabilities when the gap between the two frontiers is large.

The study provides insights into when firms trade‐off or accumulate capabilities. A good understanding of asset and operating frontiers is important in this regard. Managers need to better identify, establish and combine their firms' capabilities in response to varying internal and external contingencies.

The paper provides an original and detailed empirical validation of Schmenner and Swink's integrated model. In doing so, this study contributes to informing and clarifying the debate in the operations strategy area relating to the circumstances in which firms trade‐off and/or accumulate capabilities.

Achieving project objectives in constructionprojects such as time, cost and quality is a challenging task. Minimizing project cost often results in additional project duration and might jeopardize quality, and minimizing project duration often results in additional cost and might jeopardize quality. Also, increasing construction quality often results in additional cost and time. The purpose of this paper is to identify and analyze trade-offs among the project objectives of time, cost and quality.

The optimization model adopted a quantitative research method and is developed in two main steps formulation step that focuses on identifying model decision variables and formulating objective functions, and implementation step that executes the model computations using multi-objective optimization of Non-Dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithms to identify the aforementioned trade-offs, and codes the model using python. The model performance is verified and tested using a case study of construction project consisting of 20 activities.

The model was able to show practical and needed value for construction managers by identifying various trade-off solutions between the project objectives of time, cost and quality. For example, the model was able to identify the shortest project duration at 84 days while keeping cost under $440,000 and quality higher than 85 percent. However, with an additional budget of $20,000 (4.5 percent increase), the quality can be increased to 0.935 (8.5 percent improvement).

The present research work is limited to project objectives of time, cost and quality. Future expansion of the model will focus on additional project objectives such as safety and sustainability. Furthermore, new optimization models can be developed for construction projects with repetitive nature such as roads, tunnels and high rise buildings.

The present model advances existing research in planning construction projects efficiently and achieving important project objectives. On the practical side, the optimization model will support the construction industry by allowing construction managers to identify the highest quality to deliver a construction project within specified budget and duration, lowest cost for specified duration and quality or shortest duration for specified budget and quality.

The present model introduces new and innovative method of increasing working hours per day and number of working days per shift while analyzing labor working efficiency and overtime rate to identify optimal trade-offs among important project objectives of time, cost and quality.

The purpose of this paper is to reaffirm the suggestion that there are at least two distinct types of laws of trade-off that affect all firms and, in doing so, to contribute toward resolving the persistent trade-off debate in the literature.

Conceptual study using implicit deductive reasoning.

Two types of trade-offs are identified: “internal” can be understood following the dictates of the law of diminishing returns, while “external” can be modeled using the principle of energy conservation.

New insights are provided by discussing the impact of both laws of trade-off on the resource-based view of the firm, on new capabilities such as sustainability and innovativeness and on key strategic choices.

The study explains why trade-offs occur and outlines contextual factors that determine the “strength” of the trade-offs.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, no previous study has attempted to investigate the topic of strategic trade-offs on the basis of the principle of energy conservation.

This paper endeavors to critically examine the trade‐offs among project objectives and their underlying assumptions.

Effect‐cause‐effect (ECE) methodology of theory of constraints (TOC) has been applied to examine the assumptions behind successfully managing business projects.

The essence of discussion in this paper leads towards the realization that a possibility exists for time, cost and quality objectives to be pursued collectively in a project management environment.

This paper evaluates to what extent trade‐offs among project objectives actually exist and explores the possibility of their co‐existence in a project management environment. This realization can significantly impact the project trade‐off models in existing literature.

Time, cost and quality have been recognized to be important objectives to successfully complete a project and several studies have acknowledged the necessity to address their trade‐offs. However, most of these studies have taken the trade‐offs for granted without critically examining the assumptions behind such trade‐offs. The present paper fills that gap by applying ECE approach of TOC to examine project management trade‐off assumptions. There‐in lies the value of the current paper.

The concept of the “trade‐off” is increasingly seen as central to operations strategy because it forms the foundation of how we conceptualise the improvement process. A case‐based methodology is employed to explore managers’ cognition regarding the idea of operations trade‐offs. Findings from the five case studies examined indicate that the idea of trade‐offs is not the problematic issue for practising managers that it is for academics, indeed it is an easily understood concept which describes the operational compromises routinely made by managers. The significance of specific trade‐offs within any operation is likely to be governed by two factors. These are, first, the degree of “importance” of the trade‐off, in terms of the impact it will have on overall operations competitiveness. The second is the “sensitivity” of the trade‐off. Sensitivity is the degree of change that will be caused to one element of the trade‐off when changes are made to the other.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the operational capabilities in an emerging country, and to analyze the trade-off effect between the quality capability and the cost capability.

The empirical data were drawn from 160 firms in Brazil. Scales were validated using the Q-sort method and confirmatory factor analysis. Different techniques were adopted to reduce common method variance. Data were analyzed using multiple line regression.

The results showed that quality has a positive relationship with delivery, flexibility, innovation and sustainability capabilities. However, it was not possible to observe a positive relationship between quality and cost that confirmed the presence of a trade-off between these two capabilities.

An important practical contribution of this study is that it brings a new perspective to the relationship between quality and cost. Although quality is an important capability for the firm, emerging country managers need to understand that its implementation will take time and money; quality does not indicate an immediate reduction in cost.

This study helps expand research into operational capabilities in lesser-developed countries, such as Brazil. Most of the research on operational capabilities is conducted in industrialized countries. The paper also discusses the trade-off between the quality capability and cost capability. The results show that quality does not always lead to a reduction in cost.

The purpose of this paper is to report on a study of a shipper's dilemma as a customer. Shippers desire both lower costs and good service levels, and this dilemma may lead in the long run to a trade‐off consideration between staying loyal to existing service providers and seeking cost reductions from competing providers.

A model was devised from the literature exploring how a shipper's propensity to switch logistics service providers may be affected by perceptions of service elements and logistics cost reductions. The model was tested with survey data from 235 Finnish industrial firms and analysed using structural equation modelling.

Findings indicate that in the short‐run trade‐offs do not exist, but there may be a propensity to trade‐off in the long run. Further, quality of service is a more important factor for customers than participating in tight price competition.

The data were collected from one country and further studies are required to test these research propositions in other countries and contexts.

Logistics service providers should concentrate more on service quality and refrain from tight price competition to gain and reinforce customer loyalty. Further, shippers should also adopt a long perspective regarding strategy and refrain from short‐run, cost reduction seeking behaviour.

This study integrates several factors as drivers of outsourcing relationship continuity and/or change and presents a fresh collection of data for analysis.