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This paper is based upon a framework which links the effective integration of manufacturing strategy into overall corporate strategy (Wheelwright and Hayes 1985) and corporate attainment of environmental excellence (Winsemius and Guntram 1992). By exploring the practical implications of this framework, the paper suggests that improvement of environmental performance may depend on adequate integration of manufacturing strategy into overall corporate strategy. Hence, situations may commonly exist where corporate goals for environmental excellence remain unachieved due to insufficient development of manufacturing strategy, and manufacturing strategy integration may be a critical prerequisite to environmental excellence.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of economic development on culture and the significance of cultural change on the evolution of offshoring of services and knowledge‐based activities.

The paper offers a conceptual model that links economic development, national cultural predispositions, and the future of offshoring service and knowledge functions. It builds on a range of academic literatures within these core areas to derive a set of propositions that offer insights into the manner in which the relative success and evolution of offshoring service and knowledge work would be impacted by a country's economic development posture and its cultural roots and value systems. The model presented here is also well complemented by examples from real offshoring projects to offer the reader a comprehensive picture of the central propositions put forth.

Several propositions, formulated at the multidisciplinary intersection of service operations management, strategy, and international studies, provide ample opportunities for further discipline‐specific and cross‐disciplinary examination of complex interactions of economic development, culture, and offshoring approaches.

This form of conceptual research provides the basis for more rigorous theory development and testing. The aim of the conceptual analysis was to begin linking nascent research in the area of service and knowledge offshoring to an area of research that examines the links between economic development and culture.

Global operations managers dealing with extended service value chains that include offshore service providers must not only focus on dealing with cultural differences but they must also identify requisite cultural attributes for evolving service center roles.

By integrating perspectives from service operations management, strategy, and international studies, the paper provides new perspectives on offshoring of service and knowledge operations.

Presents a programme of research from which a typology of service customers’ quality assurance behaviours was developed. The typology’s four behaviours define the broad range of service customers’ participation in service quality assurance. Examines the relationship between these behaviours and satisfaction. Presents an initial conceptualization of a service customer’s value chain constructed from these behaviours. Provides implications for services marketing, human resource management and service operations. In sum, the two conceptual frameworks presented in this research add to researchers’ and practitioners’ understanding of how customer participation in service delivery is related to satisfaction.

Value‐added services expand manufacturing organizations’ ability to compete beyond traditional measures of manufacturing competitiveness such as cost, quality, flexibility, and delivery. This concept of expanding the roles of factories to include service has received considerable attention and wide acceptance among both researchers and practitioners. For example, recent empirical studies have demonstrated that manufacturing performance, particularly delivery performance can be enhanced through expanded service roles that focus on effective information flows within the company and to external customers. Despite such benefits, the scope of analysis has been limited to individual manufacturing organizations. Given the realities of global competition, practitioners require knowledge that extends beyond individual organizations. The domain of their problems includes the complexities of interactions with multiple stakeholders along global supply chains. The purpose of this paper, therefore, is to extend the concept of the service factory to global supply chains. Specifically, the approach will be to provide a conceptualization of the role of service in global supply chain management that can be used as a starting point for discussion and further research in this area. We provide several propositions and conclude with implications for both researchers and practitioners.

The desirability of transferring manufacturing logic and practices to service operations, strongly advocated by Levitt (1972; 1976) in two classic Harvard Business Review articles two decades ago, is now commonly challenged by both service researchers and practitioners. We defend a “production‐line approach to service” by arguing that services can “reindustrialize” by applying revised, progressive manufacturing technologies. We describe how services businesses such as Taco Bell, Southwest Airlines, and Shouldice Hospital have mastered what we call “lean” service ‐ the application of lean manufacturing principles to their own service operations. Overall, services tend to be innovation laggards, compared to manufacturing. Looking ahead, mass customization can be viewed as the convergence of service and manufacturing logic.

Reports recent findings of a two‐phase study investigating new dimensions of manufacturing competitiveness, factory‐based services. Examines relationships between broadly defined service role performance and manufacturing performance. Data were provided by 64 manufacturing firms from the USA, Canada and the UK. Also addresses under what conditions a vital element of such service‐information would be of greatest benefit to the factory’s key internal customer ‐ marketing. A survey of manufacturing and marketing respondents within 32 organizations provides empirical evidence of the positive relationship between factory information measured as a service construct and delivery performance. Anecdotal evidence from interviews provides additional insight into the roles of organizational structure and information technology with respect to the information component of factory‐based service.

It is well-reported that financial and investment sectors of the economy have grown in recent years, but also that problems of corruption, both institutional and venal, are present. Within the sector, financial auditors and investment consultants have been entrusted to work with and for those for whom financial sector stability and adequate financial returns are crucial. However, these two professions have too often served as handmaidens of corruption. This chapter reviews the history of financial auditing and investment consulting and outlines areas in which corruption manifests. It argues for an end to corruption and it asserts that the two professions could and should be the core of an uncorrupted robust system of financial practice and regulation. Such an arrangement could safeguard a world in which investment business practices are sustainable, honest, and truly productive.

Application of operations management in healthcare is particularly promising to improve the overall organisational performance, although the Italian system is behind in introducing related techniques and methods. One of the recent experiments in healthcare is the implementation of “Lean Thinking”. The purpose of this paper is to investigate which exogenous forces are driving knowledge transfer on Lean, both in the private and public healthcare sectors.

Informed by institutional sociology (DiMaggio and Powell, 1983; Powell and DiMaggio, 1991), the paper builds on the case study methodology (Yin, 2013) to elucidate the environmental pressures that are encouraging the adoption of Lean thinking by Italian hospitals and Local Health Authorities.

The study highlights the economic, coercive, mimetic and normative pressures that are triggering the adoption of Lean thinking in the Italian National Health System (INHS). At the same time, the authors reveal the pivotal importance and innovative roles played by diverse prominent key-actors in the different organisations investigated.

Considering that little is known to date regarding which exogenous forces are driving the transfer of knowledge on Lean, especially in the public healthcare sector, the paper allows scholars to focus on patterns of isomorphic change and will facilitate managers and policy makers to understand exogenous factors stimulating the transfer of Lean thinking and the subsequent innovation within health organisations and systems.

Management of customer participation (CP) in service production and delivery is of critical concern for service managers, as CP can result in various positive but also negative outcomes. However, an integrated understanding on how service providers can manage CP is still missing. The purpose of this paper is to gather and synthesize the extant knowledge on the constituents of CP management into a comprehensive framework, and to offer an extensive agenda for future research.

A systematic literature review of existing research is conducted. A total of 181 journal articles are analyzed in five steps: attaining basic understanding, coding, categorization, comparison, and further analysis.

The authors provide identification and categorizations of the customer inputs, their antecedents, the management approaches, and the outcomes of CP. To date, CP management has been addressed from three distinct perspectives: human resource management that treats customers as partial employees; operations management that focusses on customer functioning during the service process; and marketing that highlights the roles and value outcomes for customers.

The authors call for further research that addresses the relationships between the antecedents, customer inputs, management approaches, and outcomes of CP, and argue for extension of contextual diversity. The detailed research agenda provided is helpful for interested researchers.

The study offers managerial insights on how the degree and quality of CP can be improved by applying the various management methods examined in academic research.

As the first comprehensive review on this topic, this paper brings together the dispersed knowledge on CP, integrates it into a comprehensive framework of CP management, and paves the way for future focussed research.

This chapter reviews problems in the identification of learning disabilities, with particular reference to issues involving discrepancy between IQ and achievement as a criterion for definition. Alternatives to present procedures for identification of learning disabilities are described. It is concluded that no presently proposed alternative meets all necessary criteria for identification of learning disabilities, and that radically altering or eliminating present conceptualizations of learning disabilities may be problematic. The major problems of identification of learning disabilities – including over-identification, variability, and specificity – can be addressed, it is suggested, by increasing specificity and consistency of state criteria and strict adherence to identification criteria on the local implementation level. However, further research in alternative methods for identifying learning disabilities is warranted.