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Retailing thought and practice is premised on the assumption that consumers visit retailers to search for and acquire objects produced by manufacturers. In essence, we assume that the acts of consuming and producing are conducted by separate entities. This unspoken yet familiar premise shapes the questions retail scholars ask and the way retail practitioners think about their industry. Although this assumption accurately depicted retailing since the Industrial Revolution, its relevance is being challenged by a growing set of individuals who are equipped with new digital tools to engage in self-manufacturing. In this chapter, we examine self-manufacturing with a particular focus on the recent rise of desktop 3D printing. After discussing this new technology and reviewing the literature, we offer a conceptual classification of four distinct types of 3D printed objects and use this classification to inform a content analysis of over 400 of these objects. Based on this review and analysis, we discuss the implications of self-manufacturing for retailing thought and practice.

Industrialized construction (IC) has accelerated the technological advancements of construction supply chains (SCs) in Hong Kong (HK). However, the usually fragmented IC SCs often lead to friction and turbulence that retard their performance. Streamlining these workflows call for resilient SCs that can proactively overcome various vulnerabilities and avoid disruptions. Having identified supply chain capabilities (SCC) as essential precursors to supply chain resilience (SCR), this paper reports on a vital segment of a study on SCC for IC in HK that focused here on critical SCC (CSCC). Specifically, this paper aims at identifying and probing the CSCC for improving SCR in IC in HK.

After drawing on the plentiful relevant literature, an empirical study using a questionnaire survey and interviews was conducted following the multi-stage methodological framework of this study. Relevant significance analysis of the collected data enabled the selection of CSCC. Next, factor analysis facilitated grouping them under nine underlying components.

The results reveal 41 CSCC pertinent to achieve resilient SCs in IC in HK under critical capability components of resourcefulness, flexibility, capacity, adaptability, efficiency, financial strength, visibility, anticipation and dispersion.

It is expected that industry practitioners would benefit from prior knowledge of CSCC and their levels of criticalities, so as to prioritize integrating them suitably into SC processes, to develop value-enhanced-resilient SCs. Further, these findings lay the foundations for developing a powerful evaluation model to assess, then improve, SCR in IC in HK by mapping the identified CSCC with relevant critical vulnerabilities, based on study outcomes.

The purposes of this paper are to study how entry-level 3D printers are currently being used in several shared machine shops (FabLabs, hackerspaces, etc.) and to examine the ambivalent emancipation often offered by 3D printing, when users prefer the fascinated passivity of replicating rather than the action of repairing. Based on a field study and on a large online survey, this paper offers to examine different practices with entry-level 3D printers, observed in several shared machine shops (FabLabs, hackerspaces, etc.). The recent evolution of additive manufacturing and the shift from high-end additive technologies to consumer’s entry-level 3D printing is taken as an entry point. Indeed, digital fabrication has recently received extensive media coverage and the maker movement has become a trendy subject for numerous influential publications. In the makerspaces that were taken for this field survey, 3D printers were very often used for demonstration, provoking fascination and encouraging a passive attitude.

As part of the work for a PhD research on personal digital fabrication as practiced in FabLabs, hackerspaces and makerspaces, since 2012, a large-scale field survey at the heart of these workshops was carried out. Particular attention has been paid to the relationships established between the inhabitants of these places and their machines, observing the logic of developing projects and the reactions or techniques used to counter unforeseen obstacles – that shall be demonstrated to be an essential occurrence for these moments of production. From Paris to Amsterdam, Barcelona, Rome, Lyngen (Norway), San Francisco, New York, Boston, Tokyo, Kamakura (Japan) to Dakar, a means of observing at the heart of more than 30 makerspaces (FabLabs, hackerspaces) has been created, with the aim of looking beyond the speeches relayed by the media and to constitute an observatory of these places. The field observations are confirmed by a quantitative study, based on a survey submitted online to 170 users, coming from 30 different makerspaces in more than ten countries in the world and reached through social networks or mailing lists. This survey offers a rigorous insight on the uses of 3D printing and leads to the consideration of the types of attention applied to 3D printing and the part played by the “default” or “trivial” productions used for their demonstrations or performances.

Based on both the observations and the quantitative survey, it can be discussed how the question of so-called “user-friendliness” is challenged by practices of repairing, fixing and adjusting, more than that of replicating. Indeed, it is claimed that this offers a possible meaning for 3D printing practices. In the description and analysis of the behaviours with 3D printers, this leads to privilege the idea of “disengaging” and the notion of “acting” rather than simply passively using.

3D printing is just one of the many options in the wide range available for personal digital fabrication. As a part of the same arsenal as laser cutters or numerical milling machines, 3D printing shares with these machines the possibility of creating objects from designs or models produced by a computer. These machines execute the instructions of operators whose practices – or behaviours – have yet to be qualified. These emerging technical situations pose a series of questions: who are those who use these 3D printers? What are they printing? What are the techniques, the gestures or the rituals imposed or offered by these machines?

The purpose of the paper is to present and empirically support a theoretically sound, operational, and easy‐to‐implement supplier risk management framework that focuses on supplier development using a benchmarking approach.

The paper develops a five stage framework for supplier risk management, entailing supplier risk identification, assessment of supplier risks, reporting and decision of supplier risks, supplier risk management responses, and supplier risk performance outcomes, that builds on the conceptual approach of Ritchie and Bridley and the approach of the Association of Insurance and Risk Managers (AIRMIC). The operation of the framework is illustrated in a single case study of a UK firm.

The paper contributes to research in operations management and particularly in risk management in the specific field of supplier risk management. The study presents details of one of the later stages of the risk framework (i.e. management responses stage) and enhances understanding of how the development of suppliers can be conducted so as to create a viable supplier base.

As an analytical method, the use of factor analysis generally requires metric scaled data, but ordinal‐scaled data were applied to it. Therefore, two‐factor solution with non‐metric multidimensional scaling was confirmed. In addition, the operation of supplier risk framework is demonstrated within one firm only. Further case studies are therefore needed to strengthen the research findings.

Managers can use the supplier risk management framework to develop firm‐specific risk management programs, and to create management responses that influence and improve their relationships with suppliers. The framework is fully operational, easy to implement; and facilitates proactive supplier risk management, rather than reactive crisis management.

The study goes beyond the conceptual discussion of supplier risk management, and demonstrates the activities a firm can undertake in response to supplier risk ratings and assessments.

Profit forecasts should be achievable targets. Not only must they project a level and mix of sales for the forthcoming financial year, at competitive prices, but the output requires to be manufactured, and marketed, at economic costs. One area in which cost savings may be effected — or otherwise — is that of subcontracting the manufacture of some items of sub‐product. Assessing the viability of such a decision becomes, inter alia, a matter of rigorous cost comparison with the same items made internally. This article reviews some of the important features arising in make or buy decisions.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the interactions between accounting and marketing activities in a Taiwanese telecommunication firm by demonstrating the dramatic impact that improved costing methods had on the firm’s customer portfolio management activities and consequently on the firm’s bottom line.

The paper presents a case study of a firm in the highly competitive telecommunications industry in Taiwan. The case study was constructed by interviewing key individuals within the organization over an extended period and supplementing those reports with an analysis of internal company documents.

The firm dramatically increased profitability through the integration of activity-based costing into their customer portfolio framework requiring marketing and accounting functions to work closely together. In this rapidly evolving market, cost allocation and customer portfolio management are indispensable. Identifying accurate costs and keeping key customers is a critical issue for the case company. While theoretically the approach is simple, in practice considerable hurdles needed to be overcome.

While considerable literature suggests that customer profitability drives the management of an organization’s customer portfolio, critical to the success of such an endeavor is the accurate calculation and allocation of costs to individual customers. As an interdisciplinary study, this paper provides insights for both accounting and marketing highlighting their reliance on each other in a sound firm. The results of this paper will serve as a supplement to past customer portfolio management research as well as a reference for any firm seeking to enhance their approach to portfolio management.

A recent stream of research in strategy has demonstrated the effect of boundary of the firm decisions on firm performance by integrating concepts and methods from organizational ecology with predictions from transaction cost economics (e.g. Silverman et al., 1997; Bigelow, 1999; Nickerson & Silverman, 2003; Argyres & Bigelow, 2005). This work has confirmed that managing organizational boundary choices (or governance structures) efficiently has ramifications for firms’ survival chances. But further questions delineating the conditions under which governance structure alignment has a greater or lesser effect on firm survival remain. In this paper, we consider how selection pressures may differ according to a firm's adoption of either a mature or an evolving technology. Using ecological insights regarding competitive intensity and sub-population density, we test for the evidence of the role of sub-population organizational (governance) structure within a technology class. We present preliminary results using an 18-year panel of the population of U.S. automobile manufacturers from 1916 to 1934.

The primary preliminary findings: Within a population, individual misalignment diminishes survival. However, the aggregate governance structure of firms within a technology sub-population has a greater effect on the survival of a focal firm than the governance choice of the individual firm. These findings suggest that governance choices in aggregate within technologically localized sub-populations may influence firm survival. Further, this paper adds to a body of work that utilizes ecological concepts to extend organizational theory.