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The main objective of this study is to analyze the mediating role of intellectual capital in the relationship between diversification, financial stability, and efficiency of the banking sector in Ethiopia.

Secondary data for this study was obtained from audited financial statements of 17 Ethiopian commercial banks for a decade starting in 2013. A descriptive and explanatory research design with a quantitative research approach was employed. The seemingly unrelated Hierarchical regression analysis is used to estimate diversification’s effect on banks' financial stability and efficiency, considering the interaction between diversification and intellectual capital as a mediating variable.

The Mediation analysis reveals that asset diversification improves the financial stability of commercial banks when mediated by intellectual efficiency. Investment diversification negatively impacts risk-adjusted return on asset and Z score. Intellectual capital significantly enhances commercial banks' efficiency and financial stability in Ethiopia and mediates the relationship between geographic diversification, financial stability, and efficiency. The mediation analysis also indicates that intellectual capital significantly mediates the relationship between income diversification and efficiency.

This study highlights the importance of intellectual capital and promotes its strategic allocation by management and regulatory bodies to enhance the financial stability and operational effectiveness of the banking industry in Ethiopia.

To the best of the researcher’s knowledge, this study is one of the rare attempts to investigate the mediating role of intellectual capital on the nexus between diversification, financial stability, and efficiency of commercial banks in Ethiopia.

This work aims to integrate the concepts generated by a systematic literature review on patient flows in emergency departments (ED) to serve as a basis for developing a generic process model for ED.

A systematic literature review was conducted using PRISMA guidelines, considering Lean Healthcare interventions describing ED patients’ flows. The initial search found 141 articles and 18 were included in the systematic analysis. The literature analysis served as the basis for developing a generic process model for ED.

ED processes have been represented using different notations, such as value stream mapping and workflows. The main alternatives for starting events are arrival by ambulance or walk-in. The Manchester Triage Scale (MTS) was the most common protocol referred to in the literature. The most common end events are admission to a hospital, transfer to other facilities or admission to an ambulatory care system. The literature analysis allowed the development of a generic process model for emergency departments. Nevertheless, considering that several factors influence the process of an emergency department, such as pathologies, infrastructure, available teams and local regulations, modelling alternatives and challenges in each step of the process should be analysed according to the local context.

A generic business process model was developed using BPMN that can be used by practitioners and researchers to reduce the effort in the initial stages of design or improvement projects. Moreover, it’s a first step toward the development of generalizable and replicable solutions for emergency departments.

The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in significant declines in international tourist arrivals and receipts. It has also influenced destination preference, tourist demographic, travel motivation, and behavior. Recognizing health and safety as the new considerations in pursuing tourism activities in the better normal, this necessitated a reassessment of the current tourism industry by directing the attention from the usual destination-centric perspective to a value chain perspective. This chapter proposes a new paradigm for the better normal value chain by deconstructing the concepts of travel, tourism, and travel sectors and revisiting the concept of the tourism value chain (TVC) by mapping out the chain and its functional levels and integrating travel, tourism, and hospitality sectors in one value chain. Policymaking approaches such as reorganizing the value chain, empowering stakeholder involvement through coopetition, and resilience building in the face of possible adversities in the future should be adapted to achieve this suggested paradigm's goals. This analysis provides stakeholders with a broader understanding of the needed interventions in future-proofing the industry backed by industry trends in the better normal while fostering collaboration and offering flexibility to cope better in other possible shocks in the future.

Foreign subsidiaries of multinational enterprises (MNEs) operate in complex and competitive international environments, implement market and non-market strategies, manage resources and value-added activities and contribute to the overall performance of their parent firms. Thus, the research question on the determinants of MNE foreign subsidiaries’ performance is of interest to managers and academic researchers. The empirical literature has flourished over the recent decades; however, the domains are fragmented, and the findings are inclusive. The purpose of this study is to systematically review, analyse and synthesize the empirical articles in this area, identify research gaps and suggest a future research agenda.

This study uses the qualitative content analysis method in reviewing and analysing 150 articles published in 24 scholarly journals during the period 2000–2023.

The literature uses a variety of theoretical perspectives to examine the key determinants of subsidiary performance which can be grouped into six major domains, namely, home- and host country-level factors; distance between home and host countries; the characteristics of parent firms and of subsidiaries; and governance mechanisms (the establishment modes and ownership strategy, subsidiary autonomy and the use of home country expatriates for transferring knowledge from the headquarters and controlling foreign subsidiaries). A range of objective and subjective indicators are used to measure subsidiary performance. Yet, the research shows a lack of broader integration of theories and presents inconsistent theoretical predictions, inconclusive empirical findings and estimation bias, which hinder our understanding of how the determinants independently and jointly shape the performance of foreign subsidiaries.

This study provides a comprehensive, nuanced and systematic review that synthesizes and clarifies the determinants of subsidiary performance, offers deeper insights from both theoretical, methodological and empirical aspects and proposes some promising avenues for future research directions.

This paper aims to critically examine the accounting and information systems literature to understand the changes that are occurring in the management accounting profession. The changes the authors are interested in are linked to technology-driven innovations in managerial decision-making and in organizational structures. In addition, the paper highlights research gaps and opportunities for future research.

The authors adopted a grounded theory literature review method (Wolfswinkel et al., 2013) to achieve the study’s aims.

The authors identified four research themes that describe the changes in the management accounting profession due to technology-driven innovations: structured vs unstructured data, human vs algorithm-driven decision-making, delineated vs blurred functional boundaries and hierarchical vs platform-based organizations. The authors also identified tensions mentioned in the literature for each research theme.

Previous studies display a rather narrow focus on the role of digital technologies in accounting work and new competences that management accountants require in the digital era. By contrast, the authors focus on the broader technology-driven shifts in organizational processes and structures, which vastly change how accounting information is collected, processed and analyzed internally to support managerial decision-making. Hence, the paper focuses on how management accountants can adapt and evolve as their organizations transition toward a digital environment.

This study is focused to support an ongoing development project of the case company's current state and the challenges of the order-to-cash (O2C) process. The O2C process is the most visible process to the customer, and therefore, its punctual and fluent order management is vital. It is observed that the high degree of manual work in the O2C process causes mistakes, delays and rework in the process. The purpose of this article is therefore to analyze the case company's current state of the O2C process as well as to identify the areas of development in this process by deploying the means of Lean Six Sigma tools such as value stream mapping (VSM).

The study was conducted as a mix of quantitative and qualitative analysis. Based on both the quantitative and qualitative data, a workshop on VSM was organized to analyze the current state of the O2C process of a case company, engaged in the energy and environment sector in Finland.

The results found that excessive manual work was highly connected to inadequate or incorrect data in pricing and invoicing activities, which resulted in canceled invoices. Canceled invoices are visible to the customer and have a negative impact on the customer experience. This study found that by improving the performance of the O2C process activities and improving communication among the internal and external stakeholders, the whole O2C process can perform more effectively and provide better customer value.

The O2C process is the most visible process to the customer and therefore its punctual and fluent order management is vital. To ensure that the O2C process is operating as desired, suitable process performance metrics need to be aligned and followed. The results gathered from the case company's data, questionnaire interviews, and the VSM workshop are all highlighted in this study. The main practical and managerial implications were to understand the real-time O2C process performance, which is necessary to ensure strong performance and enhance continuous improvement of the O2C process that leads to operational excellence and commercial competitiveness of the studied case company.

Quality management practitioners have yet to cease the potential of digitalisation. Furthermore, there is a lack of tools such as frameworks guiding practitioners in the digital transformation of their organisations. The purpose of this study is to provide a framework to guide quality practitioners with the implementation of digitalisation in their existing practices.

A review of literature assessed how quality management and digitalisation have been integrated. Findings from the literature review highlighted the success of the integration of Lean manufacturing with digitalisation. A comprehensive list of Lean Six Sigma tools were then reviewed in terms of their effectiveness and relevance for the hybrid digitisation approach to process improvement (HyDAPI) framework.

The implementation of the proposed HyDAPI framework in an industrial case study led to increased efficiency, reduction of waste, standardised work, mistake proofing and the ability to root cause non-conformance products.

The activities and tools in the HyDAPI framework are not inclusive of all techniques from Lean Six Sigma.

The HyDAPI framework is a flexible guide for quality practitioners to digitalise key information from manufacturing processes. The framework allows organisations to select the appropriate tools as needed. This is required because of the varying and complex nature of organisation processes and the challenge of adapting to the continually evolving Industry 4.0.

This research proposes the HyDAPI framework as a flexible and adaptable approach for quality management practitioners to implement digitalisation. This was developed because of the gap in research regarding the lack of procedures guiding organisations in their digital transition to Industry 4.0.

Health-care organisations face many challenges in delivering safe, high-quality services while experiencing significant pressure to increase productivity and reduce costs. In this context, hospitals have implemented lean six sigma (LSS) programmes to improve their performance. This study aims to explore the application of LSS in three different non-profit Ecuadorian hospitals to comprehend the effectiveness of the methodology under this context.

A multiple-case analysis was performed in four phases: selecting the cases, defining a data collection protocol, performing a within-case analysis of each case and performing a cross-case analysis.

This research found that the LSS application positively impacts hospital performance indicators by reducing service time. The most frequently used tools include the supplier input process output customer diagram, value stream mapping, cause-and-effect diagram, five-why analysis, Gemba walk and paired two-sample test. Lastly, the results show that the most common challenges faced were lack of top management engagement, technical training and data availability.

The study is limited by the constraint of a single Latin American country from which the cases were analysed. Collaboration with external partners, like universities, and government policies promoting training in continuous improvement methodologies are crucial for success. Academic implications stress the importance of integrating soft skills in LSS implementation and engineering education.

This study shows a multiple-case analysis of LSS in a Latin American country highlighting the most commonly used tools, their impact on performance and the challenges of implementing LSS in health-care organisations in non-profit Ecuadorian hospitals.

Optimizing manufacturing processes addresses operational challenges and yields significant benefits across the business spectrum. This study aims to comprehensively analyze a manufacturing process through value stream mapping (VSM), aiming to streamline operations, reduce production lead times and minimize work-in-process (WIP) inventory levels. These improvements directly enhance competitiveness, customer satisfaction and overall business success, enabling a swift response to market demands, timely delivery of high-quality products and cost-effectiveness.

The approach integrates current and future-state VSM concepts with Lean tools across four stages: problem definition, current-state VSM analysis, future-state VSM design and improvement implementation. A team assembled to improve the manufacturing process for electronic devices has successfully implemented this approach.

Implemented improvements significantly reduced WIP inventory (88.8% equivalent to $572,171 annually) and production lead time (from 28.26 to 3.21 days), enhancing operational flexibility and competitiveness. Streamlined processes led to a 13% decrease in cycle time and a notable reduction in daily rework (63.6%), amounting to $118,127 annually. Labor reduction (45.5%) yielded annual savings of approximately $594,000, with affected individuals successfully transitioning to other roles, highlighting the effectiveness of lean methodologies without job cuts.

This initiative exemplifies the effective use of VSM and Lean tools in optimizing an electronic device manufacturing operation that produces 43 products across various processes. By leveraging these methodologies, this research offers valuable insights into enhancing production efficiency, resulting in shorter production lead times, reduced cycle times and significant decreases in WIP inventory and rework.

The survival of companies today hinges on their adaptability and flexibility, with digital transformation (DT) and organizational slack (OS) playing crucial roles. Despite their recognized importance, these factors are often studied separately. This study aims to explore how OS facilitates DT and evaluate their synergies and trade-offs to improve performance.

Using data from the European Manufacturing Survey, structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) and fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA), we investigate causal relationships and possible combinations between different dimensions of OS and DT that contribute to business performance.

We confirmed the positive effect of OS and DT on business performance, highlighting the importance of organizational over technological factors. While not definitively establishing OS as a precursor to DT, our findings underscore the need for human and operational slack to improve performance, especially in less technology-intensive contexts.

Our findings evidence that decision-makers should integrate OS with DT initiatives to improve the firm’s competitiveness. However, it is worth noting that while OS seems essential in low-tech shopfloors, its importance is lower in high-tech environments. Furthermore, within the possible combinations, managers should promote operational slack and digitalization, as it seems fundamental to improve business performance.

This article contributes to the management field in three ways. First, it clarifies controversies by providing evidence of the positive roles of DT and OS as drivers of competitiveness for manufacturing firms. Second, we verify that OS is not directly linked to DT, challenging existing assumptions. Third, it investigates the combinations of OS and DT that drive business performance improvement, emphasizing their synergies and trade-offs.