Search results

This study investigates the relationship between lean manufacturing practices, management accounting and performance measurement (MAC & PM) practices, organizational strategy, structure, and culture, and facility performance. We extended past research by examining the relationships between lean manufacturing, MAC & PM practices and performance in a broader organizational context. Our study was performed using survey data provided by managers and executives at 368 facilities that had contacted the Shingo Institute for information or that had entered a Shingo Prize competition. Consistent with past research we found a significant positive association between lean manufacturing practices and lean MAC & PM practices. We found that greater employee empowerment, use of process performance measures, and use of lean accounting practices were driven primarily by lean strategy and secondarily by the extent of lean manufacturing practices. We also found that changes in organization structure to support lean are driven primarily by lean strategy and secondarily by lean manufacturing practices. Change toward lean culture, on the other hand, is driven by the extent of lean manufacturing practices. Further, we found that emphasizing process performance measures does not reduce emphasis on results performance measures and emphasizing results performance measures leads to improved financial performance. Process and results measures are being used in tandem and value stream costing has not replaced traditional accounting. The results of our study provide important insights for managers of companies engaged in lean transformation and for academics who teach or research lean accounting.

Private, middle-market companies that choose to implement mergers, acquisitions, or growth strategies in today’s environment often face challenges when engaging with the capital markets, particularly when bridging the valuation gap between market values and owner values¹ (Marks, K., Slee, R., Blees, C., & Nall, M. (2012). Middle market M&A: Handbook for investment banking and business consulting. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.). This chapter applies traditional corporate finance theory to the real-world dynamics of private, middle-market companies and outlines practical steps to shrink the value gap and increase transaction readiness.

Manufacturing waste reduction with productivity improvement 4.0 has a crucial role in the use of technology for efficient production development. The objective of this research is to measure the productivity increase rate of healthy juices to present the pathway of loss reduction in healthy juices with productivity improvement 4.0. The author collected data from informants through 14 activities, including observation and in-depth interviews, before analysing the received data with the Integration Definition (IDEF) process flow chart and value stream mapping using SPSS Statistics version 17.0. The study found that loss reduction in healthy juices takes place during the cutting, boiling, and pasteurizing processes. After checking the productivity increase in healthy juice production, the total time spending is eight hours and the rate of is 6.66 minutes/bottle; the total amount is 2,880 bottles, which is lower than the expected number. Therefore, the author offered the pathway for loss reduction in healthy juices with productivity improvement 4.0. The author also found that it is able to reduce the loss during the healthy juices production activity, resulting in the productivity increase to 4,000 bottles. Within eight hours, the productivity rate is 4.80 minutes/bottle, an increasing number of 38.88%. This increase benefits entrepreneurs to increase productivity efficiently and effectively.

The title of this book suggests the possibility that new ways of managing innovative processes may favour an evolution of the economy towards an altruistic model. This chapter argues that the acceleration of innovative processes at the turn of the millennium has produced, or at least has not avoided, phenomena of the concentration of wealth and power in which it is difficult to discern an altruistic root. It is observed that the cultural models developed to interpret innovative phenomena are also focused on the profit of individual companies and not on altruistic values. The author goes on to indicate the appropriateness of referring to less limited phenomenological models and suggests exploring an analogy of innovation with Darwinian evolution. An outline of this approach is provided.

Both the theory and practice of corporate social responsibility (CSR) are foundational to the field of Business & Society (B&S). However, efforts to define and operationalize this construct have been undermined by definitional discord arising from the disparate sense-making assumptions and methods of competing North American and European research traditions. Scholars wedded to the North American research tradition have striven mightily to uncover “objective” evidence in support of the instrumental proposition that IF corporate executives were to invest more resources to enhance social and environmental performance, THEN the firm’s burnished brand image, reputation, and perceived legitimacy would elevate the firm’s long-term financial performance as well. However, the inconclusive statistical record has failed to move many corporate decision makers beyond the minimal social and environmental investments needed to create the impression of compliance with societal expectations. The proliferation of corporate scandals and the pattern of settling legal disputes without admitting guilt are also troubling. The muted impact of B&S research based on proving the instrumental proposition has prompted a new generation of European B&S scholars to explore the sense-making potential of the European research tradition, which seeks meaning and normative validity within a pluralist crucible of community discourse. This contested communicative space is filled with paradoxical tensions and contending stakeholder voices and narratives. With respect to CSR, this discursive sense-making process is animated by an aspiration toward constructing shared meanings that can guide a search for more collaborative approaches to addressing systemic challenges via stakeholder engagement and experiments in multisector collaborative problem-solving. Rather than try to scientifically “prove” a fact-based pre-existing condition, this approach embraces “an emergent and mediated form of strategic ambiguity” to keep open the possibility of “fulfilling often conflicting instrumental and social/ethical imperatives at the same time” (Guthey & Morsing, 2014, p. 556). This discourse-based search for shared meanings in support of a convergence of economic, social, and environmental values frames CSR as an aspirational cocreative process rather than as a pyramid of normative assertions loosely grounded on a search for validation in efforts to find correlations (or causation) within an assortment of “objective” facts. The discursive approach to constructing CSR also highlights the relevance of the emergence of institutional innovations that enable network interactions to address shared systemic problems. Ultimately, CSR may be expressed as a form of network governance seeking to assure the sustainable outcome of system health and vitality across micro-, meso-, and meta-levels of thought and action.