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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.

Although there is a growing body of literature on the benefits of innovation ecosystem participation for keystone/focal firms, there are limited studies on what motivates or impedes other actors’ participation (i.e. suppliers and complementors) in collaborative innovation. Hence, this study aims to address the root causes of collaborative innovation failure and develop a better understanding of the hindering factors for the generation of collaborative innovation performance in ecosystem-based manufacturing.

This study adopted a qualitative research study with 45 managers involving an online survey with open-ended questions followed by an expert focus group with seven managers from a UK-based high value manufacturing ecosystem. Data analysis and coding followed a highly iterative process using a thematic analysis approach.

This study identified six common barriers to collaborative innovation from the perspective of supplier firms. Particularly, this study found unique impeding factors in relation to revealed and deterring barriers in an ecosystem-based manufacturing context. This paper argues that suppliers and small- and medium-sized enterprises not only require financial support but also need to develop a strategic mindset, confidence, effective partnerships and knowledge about risks and returns to participate in collaborative innovation.

The extant literature identifies the motivations for joining innovation ecosystems and the prominence of value co-creation activity from the perspective of focal firms or orchestrators. However, this study offers insights into the need for an effective value co-appropriation setup amongst the ecosystem actors including suppliers. Importantly, this study proposes that effective value co-appropriation is essential for making collaborative innovation happen in manufacturing ecosystems.

This chapter provides an empirical assessment of the effects of infrastructure provision on structural change and aggregate productivity using industrylevel data for a set of developed and developing countries over 1995–2010. A distinctive feature of the empirical strategy followed is that it allows the measurement of the resource reallocation directly attributable to infrastructure provision. To achieve this, a two-level top-down decomposition of aggregate productivity that combines and extends several strands of the literature is proposed. The empirical application reveals significant production losses attributable to misallocation of inputs across firms, especially among African countries. Also, the results show that infrastructure provision has stimulated aggregate total factor productivity growth through both within and between industry productivity gains.

This study seeks to examine the mediating role of mental health issues in the workplace (MHIW) in explaining the complex relationship between person-organization-fit (P.O-fit) dimensions and workers' productivity (WP) variance during COVID-19 in the Egyptian soap and detergents industry.

Using a cross-sectional survey, the authors collected data from 373 frontline workers and supervisors working at ARMA soap and detergents (ASD) factories. In-depth interviews were conducted with 14 production-lines and quality-control supervisors. The hypothesized model was analyzed using the partial least square structural equation modeling technique.

The authors found a significant, high P.O-fit level among ASD workers. The need-supplies-fit and supplementary-fit controlled MHIW. The need-supplies-fit and supplementary-fit alongside MHIW explained the growth in WP during COVID-19. The MHIW mediated the relationship between P.O-fit dimensions and WP during the pandemic.

Limited attention was paid to investigating how the P.O-fit dimensions enable frontline workers to remain productive despite the MHIW associated with COVID-19. This study bridges the aforementioned research gap by elucidating how the supplementary-fit, demand-abilities-fit and need-supplies-fit manipulate MHIW and maintain WP growth during the pandemic.

The findings provide clear guidelines for the first-line supervisors to foster the P.O-fit dimensions, control MHIW and sustain WP growth during COVID-19.

This study is among the first to add significant information on how MHIW (as mediator) explains the relationship between P.O-fit and WP growth during the pandemic.

This chapter examines representations of gender in online modafinil markets. While gender has often been absent from scholarship on online drug markets, our analysis demonstrates the ubiquity of gender in representations of modafinil users and sellers. The analysis draws on visual images, blogs, and marketing emails relating to three websites selling modafinil, discussed pseudonymously. We describe the range of ways that notions of gender are represented in advertising. Although women represent around 40% of that buying modafinil online, websites and communications tended not to feature women. Although sexist stereotypes of women were rarely present (in contrast to direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical advertising), the ways that modafinil was imagined tended to focus narrowly on corporate spheres of work and productivity. We contrast this narrow imaginary with female journalists’ own accounts of using modafinil to manage illness and enhance creativity. Thus, we conclude that the ways that modafinil has been imagined reflects working assumptions as to who is considered the ‘normal’ participant in online modafinil markets.

Despite the existing conceptual analysis on the impact of trade unions on employees' welfare and the wider economy, the mediating effect of political party orientation (i.e., right, centre and left) on income inequality remains under researched. In this paper, the authors empirically explore the relationship between the nature of political party orientation, trade unions and income inequality.

The authors use three different measures of income inequality and dummy variables that capture government party orientation with respect to economic policy for a panel of 17 OECD economies over the period 2000–2016. The authors employ a panel fixed effects approach and the Driscoll and Kraay's (1998) nonparametric covariance matrix estimator.

The empirical evidence indicates that strong unions and, to some extent, left party governance, are fundamental institutional elements to combat rising levels of income inequality whilst countries dominated by right-wing political parties appear to exacerbate income inequality. The results pertaining to the impact of centrist parties on income inequality are ambiguous suggesting that a potential fragmentation may exist in their political approach.

The evidence generated can have significant policy ramifications in alleviating rising levels of income inequality as well in relation to the declining unionization rates observed across advanced economies.

Although recent literature has examined diverse measures adopted by SMEs to navigate the COVID-19 turbulence, there is a shortage of evidence on how crisis-time strategy creation behaviour and digitalization activities increase (1) sales and (2) cash flow. Thus, predicated on a novel strategy creation perspective, this inquiry aims to investigate the crisis behaviour, sales and cash flow performance of 528 SMEs in Morocco.

Novel links between (1) aggregate wage cuts, (2) variable operating hours, (3) deferred payment to suppliers, (4) deferred payment to tax authorities and (5) sales performance are developed and tested. A further link between sales performance and cash flow is also examined and the analysis is conducted using a non-linear structural equation modelling technique.

While there is a significant association between strategy creation behaviours and sales performance, only variable operating hours have a positive effect. Also, sales performance increases cash flow and this relationship is substantially strengthened by e-commerce digitalization and innovation.

Theoretically, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is one of the first inquiries to espouse the strategy creation view to explain SMEs' crisis-time behaviour and digitalization. For practical purposes, to supplement Moroccan SMEs' propensity to seek tax deferrals, it is argued that debt and equity support measures are also needed to boost sales performance and cash flow.

The literature mostly investigates the business cycle transmission of the United Kingdom (UK) and France as a part of a wider group (e.g. European Exchange Rate Mechanism or G7), despite their historical links and regional significance. Thus, herein paper aims to analyse the inter-dependence of these economies and how a shock from one of them affects the other for the data since 1978 to 2019.

In this paper, first, preliminary statistics were calculated in order to describe the historical relationship between these countries. The econometric part estimates the vector auto-regression model (VAR) to assess the inter-dependence of the economies. VAR model allows further to inspect the impulse response functions that shows the shock dynamics from one country to another. In order to verify if a shock from one of the economies is important to another, the study uses granger causality test.

The study establishes a strong link between these countries. A business cycle is transmitted significantly between the economies of France and UK, with a single standard deviation shock from France resulting in a long term effect of 0.4% change in gross domestic product (GDP) of UK and 1% vice versa. Additionally changes in GDP of both of the countries significantly Granger-cause change to GDP of the corresponding economy.

This is the first empirical study investigating the business cycle transmission between France and UK and providing a quantitative assessment of their inter-dependence.

Although data rich building information models have been widely adopted in the Architecture Engineering and Construction (AEC) industry in the United Kingdom (UK), use of 2D drawings on site for construction is still the norm. The ability of 2-dimensional (2D) drawings to convey complex 3-dimensional information is limited and requires interpretation from operatives, and 2D drawings can be quickly superseded by model updates. Although constructing directly from a model has been adopted in the aerospace and automotive industries, its use in construction is in its infancy. This research therefore aims to investigate the potential for, and barriers to, model-based construction in the UK.

This research uses a qualitative approach, thematically analysing 13 semi-structured interviews with UK-based construction professionals who have experience of paperless or model-based construction.

Although model -based construction has been implemented to a limited extent on some civil engineering projects; research and investment in software, network capacity, legal and contractual issues, and cultural and human factors will need to be considered before model-based construction can be implemented more widely.

The research contributes to an understudied, emergent area of construction practice and outlines hurdles that need to be understood and overcome before more widespread adoption of model-based construction can take place.

This paper aims to discuss the firm productivity premium for servitized firms. It discusses servitization across the product value chain and estimates the effects of the range and extent of servitization on productivity premium in manufacturing firms.

This paper develops a conceptual framework and tests the hypotheses on the effects of servitization on productivity premium using linear regression models with a sample of 20,837 Russian manufacturing firms gathered from the Ruslana Bureau van Dijk database and the Russian customs service.

Servitized firms exhibit higher total factor productivity and labor productivity. The labor productivity premium increases with the number of services offered. However, the impact of services on productivity varies along the product value chain: postmanufacturing and postsales services enhance productivity premium, while manufacturing and back-office services diminish them. The effect of establishment services remains ambiguous.

This paper offers an analytical framework for firms to assess their servitization strategies. These strategies should be gradual, focused on enhancing firm efficiency rather than being an end goal. Firms should initiate the process by introducing services at the postproduction and postsales stages of the product creation chain to achieve productivity premium.

The paper extends the evidence on firm-level productivity drivers and contributes to the servitization theory. A servitization strategy should be portfolio-based, considering both the potential gains and losses in productivity resulting from the implementation of specific services.