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The purpose of this paper is to develop and justify a theoretical framework for analyzing the relationship between manufacturing strategy, business strategy, time-based manufacturing competence, capability and competitiveness and their impact on firm performance for firms operating in the manufacturing sector. Many executives and scholars have argued that time is an important component for developing a brilliant strategy to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage for the firm.

This paper provides a theoretical framework primarily concerned with the relationship between time-based manufacturing competence, competitive priorities and firm performance. The framework suggests that firms focusing on time as a strategic factor at both strategic levels – business strategy and manufacturing strategy – can achieve a multi-competitive advantage, and, in turn, high performance.

To realize the level of performance associated with time-based manufacturing competence, it is essential for firms to identify the areas in which time can be reduced. These include reduction in design lead time, product concept to production; time-based competition for product-to-market firms; time-based manufacturing competence; product development activities; fast-to-product; and customer service.

This article provides a theoretical framework for linking manufacturing strategy to business strategy and performance to help expand the body of knowledge for other researchers to follow.

Reports the results of a study carried out in Tanzanian public textile manufacturing firms. The purpose was to examine the roles performed by middle and senior managers to enable them to carry out their jobs efficiently and effectively. In addition, the study concentrated on manufacturing management practices and the relationship between managers and subordinates (employees). It was found that middle managers have more practical vision for the future than top (senior) managers. The majority of middle managers, though they perform strategic functions in the organization, do not have as much influence to effect changes as do top managers However, current fundamental problems need to be at least partly solved before any particular management technique can be expected to work well. Where management techniques are applied, they need to start with basic information and reporting before any more advanced methods can be introduced. Proposes recommendations to alleviate some of the problems.

Human Resource Management Marketing Management, Consumer Behavior.

This case is suitable to be used in advanced undergraduate and MBA/MSc level.

This case illustrates the application of green human resource management (HRM) practices that are inevitable for Malaysian manufacturing firms to mitigate the imbalance between economic and environmental performance. Over the past 12 years, the environmental performance has significantly declined based on data reported by environmental performance index (EPI). This dramatic decline has caused imbalance between economic and environmental performance impacting sustainability of Malaysian manufacturing firms. Among the challenges faced by many manufacturing firms are lacking environmental control, inability to understand and apply green HRM practices, aligning green HRM strategy to firm’s strategy and environmental objectives, educating its existing employees on green HRM, measuring the outcomes of green HRM practices, and changing the existing traditional HRM practices to green HRM practices. This case sheds light on the implication of ISO14001 certification among Malaysian manufacturing firms registered with Federation of Manufacturing Malaysia (FMM) 2015 in addressing this issue.

This case illustrates the following:

• The application of green HRM practices and how it can improve sustainable performance among ISO14001-certified Malaysian manufacturing firms.

• The need for adopting ISO14001 certification as the integral part in addressing sustainability issues and in improving firm’s performance.

• The integration of both green HRM practices and ISO14001 certification helps manufacturing firms to minimize the imbalance between economic and environmental performance and to improve overall sustainable performance.

The application of green HRM practices and how it can improve sustainable performance among ISO14001-certified Malaysian manufacturing firms.

The need for adopting ISO14001 certification as the integral part in addressing sustainability issues and in improving firm’s performance.

The integration of both green HRM practices and ISO14001 certification helps manufacturing firms to minimize the imbalance between economic and environmental performance and to improve overall sustainable performance.

Defined as local manufacturing systems, industrial districts have been recognized as particularly important for the location of firms’ manufacturing activities intertwined with innovation processes. The debate on the internationalization of production has stressed the low value related to manufacturing within value chain activities (smile framework), emphasizing the need to focus on high value-added activities (R&D or marketing). Following multinational enterprises’ internationalization strategies, also district firms have progressively offshored their production phases in the past years. However, recent studies focused on backshoring have revamped the attention on the domestic control of production for firms’ competitiveness. This chapter explores district firms’ location choices for manufacturing activities between local and global. Based on an empirical analysis of about 260 Italian district firms specialized in mechanics, furniture, and fashion and supported by a case study investigation, our results show that despite district internationalization processes, a non-negligible amount of firms still carry out – in-house or through outsourcing – production activities at district level. Larger firms couple district production and long-term upstream outsourced internationalization activities. The district system confirms its role of pooling specialized competences and product know-how, being decisive for firms’ innovation and responsiveness to national and international markets. Backshoring, instead, is a very limited phenomenon and linked to upgrading strategies.

The purpose of this paper is to clarify the impact of international outsourcing on manufacturing strategy and performance of apparel manufacturing firms. The authors aim to show how managers address the effects of international outsourcing on four dimensions of manufacturing strategy – cost, quality, flexibility and delivery.

The paper utilises a qualitative exploratory approach. The authors adopted a case study method, collecting data through face‐to‐face, semi‐structured interviews with managers of six apparel manufacturing firms, selected on the basis of a number of criteria, including their use of international outsourcing.

The findings show that international outsourcing generates both positive and negative effects on the firms' competencies in four manufacturing dimensions (cost, quality, flexibility and delivery). A conceptual framework is presented that shows how firms' managerial actions carried out to address the effects of outsourcing play a crucial role in determining their manufacturing performance.

Because the sample comprised small and medium‐sized apparel firms from New Zealand, the findings may lack generalisability. Further research could expand this work to large multinational companies and service providers in international outsourcing.

The findings suggest that managers of apparel firms which engage in international outsourcing of manufacturing need to consider the impacts on their manufacturing strategy, particularly with respect to the potential trade‐offs between the manufacturing priorities.

The paper addresses a research gap in the outsourcing and manufacturing literatures by exploring the effects of international outsourcing on manufacturing strategy, and the impact of managerial responses to these effects, on firm performance.

The main purpose of this study is to understand how collective operational practices are adapted or stimulated by a firm's competitive strategy.

This study employed a data set drawn from 124 plant managers and directors of Indian manufacturing firms. Multiple regression was used to examine the impact of operational practices of lean, total quality management (TQM) and supply chain management (SCM) within competitive clusters of cost leadership, differentiation and focus strategy.

Results of the study show that the pattern of impact of operational practices on firm's performance varies according to type of the competitive strategy employed. All the three competitive strategy clusters have reported that TQM is the most important trigger for Indian manufacturing firms with relative effect of TQM practices on firm's performance being higher than that of lean and SCM practices.

Cross-sectional data from Indian manufacturing firms were used, and it would be interesting to test the analytical framework of the study for more sectors and countries. Future studies can take a longitudinal research approach to strengthen the findings of the study.

The findings explain how operational practices are aligned with competitive strategies for practitioners so that they can assign limited resources to build diverse operational capabilities based on their strategic choices.

Although very few classical studies are reported in various contexts involving competitive strategy, operational practices and firm's performance, no existing study focuses on how these three domains are linked together in the context of Indian manufacturing sector.

This paper empirically investigates the processes by which manufacturing firms create radical innovations in their core production process, referred to as radical manufacturing technology innovations (RMTI). The purpose of this paper is to improve the understanding of the processes and practices manufacturing firms use to create RMTI.

Creation processes for 23 RMTI projects from diverse industry and technology contexts are explored. Data were collected via semi-structured interviews, and an inductive analysis was carried out to identify similarities and differences in RMTI types and creation processes.

Three types of RMTI and three alternative RMTI creation processes are revealed and characterized. An integrated view is developed of the activities of the equipment supplier and the manufacturing firm, highlighting their different roles and interaction across the three RMTI creation process types.

The exploratory design limits the depth of the analysis per RMTI project, and the focus is on manufacturing technology innovations in one country. The results extend previous case and context-specific findings on RMTI creation processes and provide novel frameworks for cross-case comparisons.

The manufacturing firms’ proactive role in RMTI creation is defined. A framework is proposed for using different RMTI creation processes for different types of RMTI.

This study addresses recent calls for empirical research on understanding the ways in which process innovations unfold in manufacturing firms. The findings emphasize the role of manufacturing firms as creators of RMTI in addition to their role as innovation adopters and implementers and reveal the suitability of different RMTI creation processes for different RMTI types.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse and compare the status of manufacturing flexibility adoption, its barriers and adoption practices in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and large firms in India.

Using mixed methods sequential explanatory design, this study employs survey responses from 121 firms, followed by 16 semi-structured interviews to investigate and explain the status of manufacturing flexibility adoption, barriers to adoption and practices adopted to achieve flexibility in SMEs and large firms in India.

The study suggests that awareness of manufacturing flexibility concept in SMEs is considerably low and application of manufacturing flexibility is still at embryonic stage. It was found that both SMEs and large firms employ manufacturing flexibility, but they differ with respect to their emphasis on adoption practices used to achieve flexibility. SMEs emphasize entrepreneurial orientation and flexible human resource practices to achieve flexibility, whereas large firms emphasize practices such as technological capability, sourcing practices and integration practices to achieve flexibility. The study also illustrates barriers that hinder manufacturing flexibility adoption at plant level in India.

The study is cross-sectional in nature and is limited to specific regions of India. The use of subjective measures in survey questionnaire is another limitation of the study.

Practitioners should consider combinations of adoption practices to achieve the desired level of manufacturing flexibility. It is also important to give due consideration to barriers before considering manufacturing flexibility adoption.

The findings contribute to the manufacturing flexibility and SMEs research by providing insights into manufacturing flexibility adoption from the developing economy perspective and by widening the scope of existing research into SMEs.

This study examines the innovation-efficiency linkage for Indian and Chinese manufacturing and service firms.

We applied the stochastic production and cost frontier approach to determine the output and cost efficiency of the firms surveyed in World Bank enterprise surveys. We then used both unconditional and conditional propensity score matching (PSM) estimation techniques to examine the effects of innovation as well as R&D on output and cost efficiency of the firms surveyed.

The study results suggest that innovation-efficiency linkage varies between countries and sectors. Innovations significantly raise output and cost efficiency of Indian manufacturing firms, whereas innovations in Chinese manufacturing firms are cost-oriented and negatively affect output efficiency. For the service firms of both countries, innovations are significantly positively linked with output and cost efficiency. The study also suggests that R&D acts as a crucial moderator for innovation-efficiency linkage for Chinese manufacturing firms but not for Indian firms, and the interaction effects of innovations are not substantially higher in magnitude than their individual effects. Finally, conditional PSM results suggest knowledge spillover for effective innovations of Indian firms, whereas R&D is a must for substantial innovation-efficiency linkage in Chinese firms.

This study offers quite a few crucial policy decisions concerning the relationship between innovation and efficiency as well as the moderation effect of R&D on innovation-efficiency linkage. It concludes that the effects of innovation on firms' efficiency and the role of R&D as a moderator of the innovation-efficiency relationship differ between India and China across the manufacturing and service sectors.

Scholars have widely asserted that a firm’s manufacturing technologies must be aligned with its competitive strategy. This study tests the existence of such a strategy‐technology “fit”, determines whether good fit results in better performance, and examines the nature of fit in light of computer controlled or “advanced manufacturing technologies”. For a sample of 399 metal machining firms, a strategy‐technology alignment was found to exist and relate to higher financial performance. Advanced manufacturing technologies were found to both reinforce and alter conventional thinking about the flexibility‐efficiency tradeoff. Specific technologies were found to be uniquely bundled or combined to support specific competitive requirements.