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This study aims to validate a data collection tool's psychometric properties to explore whether business management research's relevance is a high-order construct made up of its perceived interest and perceived relevance. The authors conducted a confirmatory factor analysis to validate a two-factor scale. The sample was composed of 148 MBA students from a Peruvian business school. Results showed the appropriate levels of validity and reliability and confirmed the usefulness of this data set for exploring the relationship between perceived interest and relevance. Businesses and schools can replicate the validated tool for reviewing their curricula and teaching practices, exploring the gap between business and management research results and advancing managers' research literacy and evidence-based practice in business education and training. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the rise of Internet of Things (IoT) technology, the seamless connection between the physical and digital worlds has been realized. This review paper aims to conduct a science mapping review of IoT applications in industrial management and to identify mainstream research topics, research gaps, and future research directions. Using VOSviewer as a visualization tool, 142 articles retrieved from the Scopus database were quantitatively discussed using scientometric analysis. Additionally, a follow-up qualitative discussion was focused on mainstream research topics, existing research gaps, and future research directions as the main research goals. The results revealed influential findings for the co-occurrence of keywords, journals, countries, authors, and documents analyses. Moreover, it was found that the existing research mainly focused on four main research topics including (1) application of IoT in manufacturing based on cyber-physical systems, (2) IoT-related technologies on logistics and supply chain management, (3) The impact of IoT on business models, and (4) Industrial IoT (IIoT) in the context of Industry 4.0. On this basis, the existing research gaps and future research directions are proposed. This review paper would help relevant practitioners and researchers to better understand the existing body of knowledge and lay the foundation for further research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present evolution of production systems and markets is forcing producers, distributors and vendors to integrate their operations into large-scale networks of different services for managing materials and products, information and capitals, i.e. into a 'supply chain.' 'Integration' seems to be the new paradigm in organizing business lines, and 'supply chain management' seems to be the related organization approach that can help in managing interactions among concurrent firms as well as markets. However, supply chains are really complex systems, and their management is a really complex task in which the cooperation of several intelligent agents together and their finalization to common industrial goals need methods and procedures that are still either to be developed or, at the least, to be widely validated. The actual goal for an effective supply chain management is to obtain a good integration of all intelligent agents, such as to make each local strategy as cooperative as possible. This paper will analyse the basic concepts of supply chain management, with the aim of presenting a set of design criteria that could drive a designer in organizing more efficient management systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The research reviews conducted by Lo and Chai ([2012]. Quantitative analysis of quality management literature published in total quality management and business excellence (1996–2010). Total Quality Management & Business Excellence, 23(5-6), 629–651. doi:10.1080/14783363.2012.669553) and Dereli et al. ([2011]. An analysis of the papers published in total quality management & business excellence from 1995 through 2008. Total Quality Management & Business Excellence, 22(3), 373–386. doi:10.1080/14783363.2010.532337) were based on TQM&BE, and together they covered the period between 1995 and 2010. The limitation of these two studies is that the study period ended in 2010. Accordingly, this study extends those previous studies by reviewing papers published between 2010 and 2019. TQM&BE is a suitable object for analysis because it is one of the top journals cited in the quality management field and plays a key role in the quality and scientific knowledge of TQM. This study demonstrated the feasibility of using the (self-organizing map) SOM algorithm to build a topic map. The SOM technique is one of the most popular artificial neural networks (ANNs). Based on this map, six topic areas were identified. In addition, the new identified themes after 2010 include the BE framework, and innovation, learning, team, and design. The results also showed that research on TQM&BE has undergone a shift in focus from a dominance of TQM to service quality, (International Organization for Standardization) ISO, and innovation and learning. Finally, the results showed that the SOM can be considered as a technique for developing topic maps for academic research reviews. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is intended to provide a scoping review on interfaces in service modularity. There is little detailed understanding of this concept despite its attributed importance. We identified 12 papers, showing that interfaces in service modularity are an area still open to research, especially with regard to interfaces that cross organisational boundaries. We found common themes in the available literature: the nature of interfaces, service fragmentation and predefined interfaces. Further research is needed on interfaces in service modularity, especially for complex services with components that stem from multiple, autonomous organisations. More specifically, there is a need for more studies that explore in detail how interfaces manifest themselves, and how they can be addressed to improve complex service provision. In addition, we argue why healthcare could be an interesting domain in which to conduct those studies. Our paper’s contribution comprises a detailed description of interfaces in service modularity, the dissemination of summarised research findings and suggestions for potential future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author highlights the Academy of Marketing Conference 2015: The Magic in Market (AM2015) which explored the dimensions of marketing that are magical ranging from the cabbalistic to the fantastical and from the astonishing to the preternatural. He presents the final 11 papers for the special conference issue of the "Journal of Marketing Management" whose topics include an assessment of the roles of fantastical themes in the stories of marketing practitioners.

Information technology poses many challenges both to general management and to the IT industry itself. After extrapolating some of the technological trends that could have significant impacts on commercial and public sector IT in the 1990, the paper reviews four major challenges. These are the need to develop IT strategies, both nationally and for individual organisations; the need to create alliances: the need to avoid misalliances; mechanisms for converting ideas into action. A considerable emphasis is placed on the need to understand the managerial environment within which IT is used, and to see IT as only one element within wider organisational systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

But replacing market processes (supported by relevant and reliable accounting information) with government allocation processes risks resource misallocation and dampens innovation and ultimately economic growth. The COVID-19 pandemic wrought profound changes in product and service markets which require a process of "creative destruction" that might be hindered by lack of a proper exit strategy from government interventions. They document firms' adjustments of their management controls in response to the COVID-19 crisis resulting in stronger action controls, more flexible result controls and weaker cultural controls. [Extracted from the article]

There is concern that management and business research favours rigour and theory over relevance and practice. There are pressures from funding councils for researchers to show more impact. The paper shows how the bridge between the academic world and the world of practice can be served by action learning. Consideration is given to the difficulties that sustain the disconnection of business and management research before recent ideas on theories of knowledge translation are presented. Using the example of an article published for an academic journal relating to futures and foresight in organisations, the paper shows how action learning provides a vehicle to complete the process of application. Two examples of the introduction of Futures and Foresight Learning are presented, including how impact was made during the Covid 19 pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this editorial, I reflect on my last 6 years as associate editor for I Construction Management and Economics i to explain common problems found in manuscripts rejected in our peer-review process. In CME, the editorial team is very mindful that we should see and encourage the reviewers to see each manuscript from the perspective of the authors, rather than to offer advice on writing a paper that the reviewer thinks the authors should be writing instead. In the specific area of construction economics, for example, Brochner's ([4]) analysis shows the asymmetry between authors in CME citing those from mainstream economics and those from mainstream economics citing CME; the former far exceeds the latter. In part, this is understandable as authors sometimes want to see how the editors and reviewers react to their study before figuring out, often with the generosity of our reviewers and the editorial team, what conversations matter at the current moment and in this present space. [Extracted from the article]

Inventory pre-positioning is critical to quickly and efficiently responding to potential disasters. This paper considers a NPO (a relief agent) that requires stockpiling multiple products for responding multiple potential disaster events. By employing the multi-product newsvendor (MPNV) approach, this paper establishes a multiple relief materials’ storage model that aims to minimise the expected total cost of the NPO. Our model acknowledges that the occurrence of a disaster, the demand after a disaster and the donation after a disaster are uncertain. Given the no-budget constraint, this paper shows the implicit conditions that determine the optimal solutions; for the case with a budget constraint, the paper develops a two-binary iterative approach to solve the model with a budget constraint. Numerical examples are conducted to investigate the impacts of model parameters. The paper further proposes a flexible storage policy, in which the NPO and the supplier jointly stockpile relief materials. The optimal solution of the case with the flexible stockpiling policy is also characterised. Moreover, this paper shows the policy implementation can simultaneously increase the performance of the NPO and the supplier; and both players of the supply chain prefer that the supplier solely holds all inventory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

National culture has received a substantial amount of interest in the operations management literature. We present the first structured review of articles studying national culture in operations management. Our search returned 51 papers published in ten leading journals between 2000 and 2017. We sort and analyse the papers according to three focus areas of operations management (strategy, execution and improvement). We also analyse the papers according to whether they address the relevance of national culture, the impact of national culture or the actions managers can use to manage or mitigate the effects of national culture. We find that national culture appears as a relevant variable in all focus areas of operations management research but that the direction and strength of its impact remain undetermined. Only a handful of papers address how managers can actively deal with challenges related to national culture. We propose a research agenda and a guiding framework for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Significant subassemblies are defined as the reusable regions of pre-existing 3D assembly models. A significant subassembly has great significances for design reuse as it aggregates abundant knowledge in a vivid 3D CAD model and enables designers to reuse existing mature designs from a high-level perspective. Consequently, this paper contributes to significant subassembly generation from pre-existing 3D assembly models for design reuse. The paper first gives an explicit definition of significant subassemblies and further explores the multilevel knowledge embedded in these significant subassemblies. Based on the above definition and multilevel knowledge, a knowledge-based approach is then proposed for significant subassembly generation, which includes three phases: (1) identifying candidate subassemblies with high cohesion inside and low coupling outside using the Markov clustering process; (2) removing normal candidate subassemblies with low reusability and less information, and generating filtered subassemblies using the proposed assembly frequency - inverse mean subassembly frequency based scheme; and (3) determining significant subassemblies by measuring the complexity of the filtered subassemblies. Finally, a computer numerical control honing machine model is taken as an application example to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is playing a significant role in our social and daily life for technological development. The efficient integration of AI into business organizations or firms is improving performance and efficiency on a significant scale. Nowadays, artificial intelligence (AI) is assisting criminal activities or committing crimes through autonomous activity related to business, e-commerce, and market manipulation. AI could be used to aid criminal activity or, in certain situations, a mistake has resulted in criminal activity and most of the fields lack strong legislative safeguards due to the regulatory challenges imposed by the special nature of AI-Crime (AIC). The paper has examined the application and criminalization of AI in business and firm management. As we will have to strengthen the legislation for managing, preventing, and punishing AI-based business-related crimes, the last segment of the paper has suggested recommendations to counter the regulatory challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a prestigious and unique journal on total quality management (TQM), Total Quality Management & Business Excellence (TQM&BE) has significantly contributed to theoretical and practical advancement. Retrieving 2588 literature from Scopus between 1990 and 2022, this paper applies CiteSpace and VOSviewer to analyze the publications per year and by geographic distribution, productive authors, highly cited literature, and related journals. Through combining content analysis, research content and hotspots of eight key themes are summarized. Additionally, this paper compares TQM&BE with seven journals on quality management, and predicts development potential of impact factor and quartile by ARIMA method. The results show the following: (1) With the growth in publications, TQM&BE has been gaining approval from numerous countries worldwide, especially in universities in China, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Sweden. (2) TQM&BE publishes many highly cited classics in areas such as frameworks of TQM, customer satisfaction, and improvement of quality innovation approaches, effectively expanding accumulation of achievements. (3) Sustainable quality management, excellence 4.0, role of e-service quality in customer loyalty, and upgradation of Kano model are its recent hotspots. (4) TQM&BE is projected to maintain high-speed growth in impact factor, while its academic authority will increasingly surpass other journals on quality management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The global expansion of business events has led to an increase in organizations hosting events, attracting participants from around the world, and promoting the host countries as travel destinations. While past research has primarily focused on the economic impact of these events, this paper seeks to address the gap in understanding the non-economic legacies of business events. Through a review of related literature from 2010 to 2020, the paper examines a sample of 37 articles and identifies emerging themes related to social, cultural, and environmental legacies that extend beyond the management period of the business event. The paper contributes an initial conceptual framework that highlights the impact of non-economic legacies on social, economic, and environmental factors, and proposes future research avenues for different stakeholders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper starts with a critique of the reductionist approach to control and performance measurement that emphasizes the parts of a system in isolation. The critique provides the basis for a shift in focus to a systems perspective that emphasizes the interactions between the parts of a system. It is argued that this shift is important because the behaviour of a system is a product of the interactions of the parts not the behaviour of the parts in isolation. Two systems approaches to control and performance management are compared and critiqued: Beer's viable system model and Seddon's lean systems. The paper concludes with the advancement of a model for control and performance measurement that not only integrates the work of Beer and Seddon but also compensates for the weaknesses in these approaches through the inclusion of a process of boundary critique. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) is paving the way for new and disruptive approaches to managing operations, innovation, and supply chains. Africa cannot ignore this revolution and afford to stand by while the rest of the world moves forward. In this paper, I invite scholars in the broader field of operations management and innovation to take part in the dialogue, undertake research to advance Africa in the 4IR era, publish their work to ensure that what happens in Africa does not remain in Africa, and inspire or be inspired by others around the world. Consequently, I provide an overview of four papers that were presented at the second African Operations Management Conference in 2019. The conference was hosted by the University of South Africa in partnership with the Africa Automation Fair. These papers focus on the readiness of academic institutions to produce graduates that possess 4IR skill sets, the options available to firms to manage their dependency on suppliers' supply chain innovation, the design dimensions that impact a supply chain network to perform effectively and operate with resilience while facing disruptions, and the individual components of contractor commitment to incorporate into the decision-making process to deliver road infrastructure projects in a sustainable and socially responsible manner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The immediate past editor of the Journal of Personal Selling and Sales Management comments on the paper "Utilization of Sales Management Knowledge and Identification of Contributors: An Analysis of JPSSM 1980-1990." Several implications are derived pertaining to the body of knowledge on sales and sales management and the role of the Journal of Personal Selling and Sales Management in the development and dissemination of this body of knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reports on the international seminar on research issues in accounting and business administration organized by the Faculty of Statistics at the University of Padua held in Bressanone-Brixen, Italy on September 12 to 13, 1991. Presentations were made by accounting academics from four different universities in Europe on their current research projects, the aim of the seminar being to encourage intellectual exchange and the discussion of a broad set of issues in accounting. To further this aim the presentation of each paper was followed by comment by a discussant and a general discussion.

The article discusses the journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management which is considered as seminal in moving marketing research forward as a scientific discipline. It states of the sales research methodology section which is created to raise awareness of methodological issues in the importance of sales researchers. It notes on the method of new sales which uses modifications of existing tools. It adds importance issue of potential authors to focus on specific application on scales to sales samples. It also includes the prescriptive in the issue including formative variables in sales, social network analysis and analytic modeling in sales.

Recent digital advancements, including social software, mobile technologies and augmented reality, offer promising opportunities to empower knowledge workers in their production environment by leveraging their knowledge processes, decision-making skills and social interaction practices. This paper proposes a conceptual framework for empowering workers in industrial production environments with digitally facilitated knowledge management processes. The framework explores four concrete facets of digital advancements that apply to a wide range of knowledge processes and production strategies in manufacturing companies. Each of these advancements are capable of supporting one specific facet of the individual knowledge management processes of workers; knowledge transfer, discovery, acquisition and sharing. The study contributes to the production research community by aligning emerging digital technologies and current trends in advanced manufacturing environments to benefit workers and improve job satisfaction, efficiency and productivity. The paper also contains suggestions about developing innovative solutions for production environments that support workers with digital technologies for flexible production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The-Nominal-The-Best (N-type) loss function is established based on the Taylor expansion. Results become more accurate as more Taylor expansion items are retained. N-type loss function neglects terms with powers higher than two, which inevitably leads to a certain deviation between the calculated result and the true value. In this paper, Taylor expansion is retained to the third-order, and the quality loss function is extended to three items. The quality loss coefficients of each item are determined, and the asymmetric piecewise cubic quality loss function is established. The deviation between the cubic and quadratic functions is evaluated. The formula for calculating the hidden quality cost of a product is derived by choosing an appropriate density distribution function and using process capability. Two cases are utilised to analyse and discuss the quality loss and hidden quality cost of a product using the cubic quality loss and quadratic quality loss functions. This paper provides a more accurate approach for the study of product quality management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the semiconductor industry moves away from vertical integration, performance measures play an increasingly important role to ensure effective collaboration. This paper demonstrates that the theory of constraints (TOC)-based measures, Throughput and Inventory Dollar-Days (T/IDD), induce autonomous supply chain (SC) links to function as a synergistic whole and thereby, improve the performance of the whole SC network significantly. We model an SC network of a well-known TOC case study using discrete event simulation and discuss managerial implications of these measures via a set of scenarios. The scenarios explain how these measures - without sharing sensitive financial data - allow members of an SC network to monitor both the effectiveness (TDD) and efficiency (IDD) of SC members and lead them to create win-win solutions following well-known TOC-based planning and control concepts. We conclude this paper by discussing some limitations of the proposed research and provide directions for future theoretical research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A recent thought provoking paper affirms that in practice, the trade-offs model is not used. In this study, we reanalyse the data based on a more complete understanding of Skinner's model. Our results indicate that while there may be some evidence of firms that are capable of achieving high performance across a number of manufacturing capabilities in that investigation, there is also plenty of evidence generally consistent with the core tenet of the trade-offs model. We also emphasise that more practical and definitive statements about Skinner's model must necessarily involve detailed studies of market leading firms, or, individual product/services. Opportunities to move forward on the topic of strategic tradeoffs are outlined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the mainstream, there has been a strong advocacy to prolong copyright duration. This makes it an important task to rigorously examine if a longer copyright duration is helpful in guaranteeing the earnings of authors from their works as well as the promotion of cultural creativity and diversity. In contrast to many previous studies that have been rooted in law-based perspectives, this paper addresses these issues by adopting a business and economic analysis. By exploring the true impact of different copyright durations, this paper scrutinizes why a longer duration does not improve the author's earnings, and in fact, impedes cultural creativity and diversity. As a solution, this paper proposes to shorten the copyright duration and analyzes why this is likely to increase the earnings of authors from their works and to enhance cultural diversity and creativity. This study provides a complementary asset to understand more clearly copyrights and its effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much research has been carried out in the field of business management to understand why some organizations perform better than others, while others fail. Strategic management field has a strong focus on exploring how firms operate and the performance differentials among them. In strategic management, predominantly, three theories are applied to assess firm performance. These theories are Resource-Based View (RBV), Dynamic Capabilities theory (DC), and Contingency Theory (CT). Through a systematic literature review, this paper explores how these three theories have been applied to construction management literature to review and examine the performance of the construction firms. Review of 46 articles was carried out to identify the factors that affect the performance of the construction firms in line with the frameworks presented by the aforementioned theories. The findings of the study hold significance for future researches on performance determinants of construction firms by evidencing the application of RBV, DC, and CT in construction management literature, which paves the way to future research aiming at combining the underlying principles of these theories to explore construction firm's performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Organizational dependency on Information and Communication Technology (ICT) drives the preparedness challenge to cope with business process disruptions. Business Continuity Management (BCM) encompasses effective planning to enable business functions to resume to an acceptable state of operation within a defined timeframe. This paper presents a systematic literature review that communicates the strategic guidelines to streamline the organizational processes in the BCM program, culminating in the Business Continuity Plan design, according to the organization's maturity. The systematic literature review methodology follows the Evidence-Based Software Engineering protocol assisted by the Parsifal tool, using the EbscoHost, ScienceDirect, and Scopus databases, ranging from 2000 to February 2021. International Standards and Frameworks guide the BCM program implementation, however, there is a gap in communicating metrics and what needs to be measured in the BCM program. The major paper result is the confirmation of the identified gap, through the analysis of the studies that, according to the BCM components, report strategic guidelines to streamline the BCM program. The analysis quantifies and discusses the contribution of the studies on each BCM component to design a framework supported by metrics, that allows assessing the organization's preparedness in each BCM component, focusing on Information Systems and ICT strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Phenomenon-driven research (PDR) is problem-oriented research that focuses on capturing, documenting, and conceptualizing an observed phenomenon of interest in order to facilitate knowledge creation and advancement. As an ideas-led and interpretive way of researching, and with an emphasis on exploring issues and challenges that bother those experiencing observed problems, PDR is an engaging way to develop new contributions to organizational change debates. Generating knowledge this way thereby allows for a variety of research paths and outcomes that may lead to a series of associated debates and research opportunities. Yet although it is widely acknowledged, this pathway to knowledge has not been properly described and documented, thus potentially leading to poor and fragmented understanding of what PDR is and how to pursue it. In order to understand better PDR, in this paper – and through this special issue – we showcase this orientation. Describing the core features of a PDR paper, demonstrated through examples, we show what published PDR looks like and describe how organizational change researchers can better accommodate this approach. With this focus on engagement with phenomena we aim to inspire researchers to return to or take up more PDR, specifically challenging organizational change scholars to develop and extend knowledge with this orientation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper focuses on parts presentation in manual assembly. Its aim is to determine how kitting affects the time spent by the assembler fetching parts and, more specifically, what is the impact of the proportion of parts included in the kit. The present paper is based on four case studies of automobile assembly, in which parts presentation by kitting is compared with parts presentation in component racks. In the case studies, kitting enabled shorter distances between parts presentation and assembly object and thereby a potential reduction in the time spent fetching parts. However, when only a proportion of parts were kitted, the time spent fetching parts was not always reduced, in spite of this potential. The present paper finds that when deciding which parts should be kitted, attention should be paid to how and in what order assembly operations are performed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A three-echelon, dynamic lot-sizing model is presented for computing the parameters of a serial supply chain, which consists of integrated material replenishment, production at a capacity constraint, and outbound dispatching with a periodic delivery policy. The model is applicable in the general context of a three-echelon model with capacity constraint at the middle echelon of the serial supply chain which was not considered in most of the literature. This paper addresses a number of structural properties of the model and proposes a polynomial-time algorithm for deriving the optimal solution of minimising the total system costs over the planning horizon. Examples are provided to describe the algorithm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The thermal performance of a Z-shaped enthalpy heat exchanger utilizing 45-gsm Kraft paper as the heat and moisture transfer surface for heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) energy recovery is experimentally investigated through temperature and moisture content measurements. A mathematical model is developed and validated against the experimental results using the effectiveness-NTU method. In this model the paper moisture transfer resistance is determined by paper moisture permeability measurements. Results showed that the paper moisture transfer resistance is not constant and varies with moisture gradient across the paper. Furthermore, the model is used to predict the heat exchanger performance for different heat exchanger flow configurations. The results showed that higher effectiveness values are achieved when the heat exchanger flow path width is reduced. Temperature and moisture distribution in the heat exchanger is also studied using a computational fluid dynamics package (FLUENT). To model the moisture transfer through the porous materials a nondimensional sensible–latent effectiveness ratio was developed to obtain the moisture boundary conditions on the heat exchanger surface. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses several of the articles featured in the Special Section of the "Journal of Management Information Systems." The main focus of all the articles was digital economy and information technology (IT) value research. One of the featured papers examines how supply chains that are powered by IT affect a company's organizational abilities to achieve flexibility and competitive costs. Another article focuses on IT strategies in manufacturing and how they affect production process outsourcing to create lower plant costs and higher quality.

Provides an overview of the special issue of "International Journal of Logistics: Research and Applications" dated December, 2003. Papers presented at the Logistics Research Conference held 2003 in Birmingham, England; Theme of collaboration for innovative supply chain solutions; Preview of articles.

Industry 4.0 provides new paradigms for the industrial management of SMEs. Supported by a growing number of new technologies, this concept appears more flexible and less expensive than traditional enterprise information systems such as ERP and MES. However, SMEs find themselves ill-equipped to face these new possibilities regarding their production planning and control functions. This paper presents a literature review of existing applied research covering different Industry 4.0 issues with regard to SMEs. Papers are classified according to a new framework which allows identification of the targeted performance objectives, the required managerial capacities and the selected group of technologies for each selected case. Our results show that SMEs do not exploit all the resources for implementing Industry 4.0 and often limit themselves to the adoption of Cloud Computing and the Internet of Things. Likewise, SMEs seem to have adopted Industry 4.0 concepts only for monitoring industrial processes and there is still absence of real applications in the field of production planning. Finally, our literature review shows that reported Industry 4.0 projects in SMEs remained cost-driven initiatives and there in still no evidence of real business model transformation at this time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops a dynamic warehouse planning model incorporating demand forecast and contract flexibility, and addresses how demand forecast and contract flexibility affect warehouse size planning. In this model, a manager announces a nominal size of the warehouse space to rent before the planning horizon begins (strategic decision), and determines the ordering quantity and actual warehouse size during the horizon (operational decision). In particular, the manager can adjust the actual warehouse size within a range according to dynamically updating demand forecast during the horizon, which reflects the contract flexibility. We start with the characterisation of the operational decision. For any given nominal size, we show the monotonicity of optimal inventory replenishment and warehousing decisions w.r.t. demand forecast and contract flexibility. However, this monotonicity does not necessarily hold for the strategic choice of the nominal size. Finally, a case study is presented to investigate the interaction between demand forecast information and contract flexibility. We find that the value of demand forecast can be enhanced as the contract flexibility improves. However, more forecasted demands do not imply higher value of contract flexibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A common task in both trade and manufacturing, manual picking from large containers often involves considerable physical workload, as well as low efficiency and varying picking times. With quantitative evidence from an industrial setting, the paper provides detailed insights into how physical workload and picking time vary in picking from large containers. Components at a short horizontal distance from the picker and at the top instead of the bottom of the pallet are associated with shorter picking time and lower physical workload. Moreover, pallets tilted 45° towards the picker are associated with picking times that are significantly shorter on average and display smaller variations than horizontal pallets. The effects that the tilting of the pallets has on physical workload differs depending on component characteristics and from which section of the containers picking was performed. In the study, the greatest values of physical workload were observed for the tilted pallets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Warehouse design and operations have undergone major changes over the past decades. In particular, with the onset of e-commerce, the complexity of warehouse operations has increased multi-fold with the storage of large SKU assortment in small quantities, volatile demand patterns and primarily single-line customer orders. They have grown in size due to consolidation, new and fast identification and communication technologies have found their way into the warehouse and process automation technologies have progressed improving speed and operational efficiencies. In line with these developments, this special issue pays attention to new technologies and methods and how they impact warehouse design and management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Managing production level after the launch of a new product is a challenging problem and is critical to the overall profit of manufacturing firms. The problem involves concepts from different fields including production planning, manufacturing flexibility, forecasting, and marketing. In this paper, the gaps in the existing literature are first illustrated. With the goal of addressing the identified research gaps, agent-based modeling and simulation is employed to analyze the performance of different production planning strategies under various levels of volume flexibility and consumer social network structures. The key distinguishing feature of the developed model is the capability of the manufacturing firm to adjust its production level by forecasting the future demand. The analysis of the simulation outputs yields substantial results by challenging some intuitive and traditional understandings of manufacturing systems. The paper also provides a discussion on managerial implications of the results in order to provide the managers with guidelines on the implementation of the model in real-world diffusion environments. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Since the schedule is often not optimal and unable to meet the promised completion dates in the critical chain project management, in this paper, we address an optimal approach of generating the critical chain schedule. The float time of the non-critical chain is used as the primary concern of setting feeding buffers, and thus the procedure of generating critical chain project plan is remarkably simplified. A critical chain project scheduling problem considering both the resource constraints and duration uncertainties is formulated, followed by a differential evolution algorithm with a new mutation strategy that combines two single strategies to obtain the global exploration as well as the fast convergence ability. At the end of the paper, numerical experiments are performed on modified standard data-sets in PSPLIB, and the results reveal the effectiveness of the algorithm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A call for papers on innovative drying technologies is presented.

Many organizations have undertaken major business process change (BPC) initiatives over the past ten years. Earlier thinking on this topic indicated a significant role for information technology in these initiatives, while more recently the importance of change management has been emphasized. This paper examines a model that proposes various antecedents to successful BPC. Three case studies with varying degrees of BPC project success are described in the context of this model, with the specific goal of determining facilitators and inhibitors to the success of these change efforts. The results indicate that the successful project tended to have facilitators in all dimensions of the framework, including the change environment, process management, and change management. The least successful project exhibited inhibitors primarily in the area of cultural readiness and change management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides an analysis of the literature on transnational education to identify the key challenges and success factors for the sustainable operation of transnational higher education (TNE) programmes as perceived by key stakeholders. Probing the stakeholders' perspectives and applying a systematic approach, this study analyses 227 English-written articles retrieved from the Web of Science database published from 2000 to 2021. Key challenges identified include difficulties in managing the TNE programmes, ensuring quality assurance, adapting the curricula to the local contexts, accommodating offshore students' learning styles, creating studying environments for TNE students equivalent to those in the home institutions, ensuring preparedness of the academic staff, and facilitating the knowledge transfer in the host countries. The analysis also highlights six factors for the sustainable development of TNE programmes, including the effectiveness of the operations, the internationalization of the curricula, the transnational experience of the students, the development of the transnational staff, the existence of a proper regulatory framework in the host countries, and the development of a global systematic data collection for quality assurance. In addition, the evidence collected suggests that while the transition from domestic into a foreign programme can be rewarding, it demands appropriate planning and implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Little is known about how, and through which characteristics, CEO effects DUI mode innovation activities in SMEs. Thus, we connect the DUI mode concept with business management research and use data from 40 qualitative interviews in German non-R&D-based, but innovative SMEs. Applying the upper echelon concept as an analytical framework our results show that the CEO acts as an important moderator and mediator between DUI learning mechanism and innovation performance. In particular CEO's values and cognitive base may help to increase innovation activities of the employees. Our paper is the first that empirically applies CEO's psychological attributes of the upper-echelons concept to DUI innovations in non-R&D SMEs. We have developed a new version of the upper echelons model as well as hypotheses gained from the qualitative data analysis that are ready to be tested with quantitative procedures to improve the upper echelons theory concerning DUI-led innovation processes in SMEs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents observer-based chaos suppression for a four-echelon supply chain system based on fractional order calculus. As the market information is usually distorted, nonlinear observers for supply chain model are implemented to accomplish chaos suppression using linear matrix inequality (LMI). Sufficient conditions for the observer-based schemes are established by using Lyapunov stability theory. The fractional calculus is utilised to provide superior dynamic performance for the controlled supply chain system over its integer-order counterpart. Numerical simulations are performed to validate robust performance and stability of observer-based supply chain management. Finally, it is found that the presented approach can help decision-makers develop effective supply chain networks under disruptions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rapidly changing market requirements and shorter product lifecycles demand assembly systems that are able to cope with frequently changing resources, resource capabilities and product specifications. This paper presents a multi-agent framework that can adapt an assembly system in order to cope with such changes. The focus of this work is on the ability to plug resources (such as PLCs) into and out of the system, and dynamically aggregate resource capabilities to form more complex ones as resources are plugged in. In addition, an implementation of the framework on an industrial assembly system is discussed, and some insights are provided into some of the key features that product specification languages ought to have to be useful in real world assembly systems, and into the added value of using the proposed framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The booming platform economy has made it very convenient for consumers to communicate with each other through social media whenever and wherever they want. As industry and academia have repeatedly confirmed, such social communications are now significantly changing firms' business and management practices. This paper studies how social communications affect an upstream firm's product line design in the platform economy when an online platform makes strategic contract choices. We show that for both wholesale and agency contracts, social communications increase the product line length while decreasing the product price and quality. We also identify the conditions under which social communications provide a firm with fewer incentives for product line extension under a wholesale contract than under an agency contract. On the platform side, we show that an agency contract can be preferred in the presence of social communications over a wholesale contract if and only if the commission rate is sufficiently high or both the commission rate and the product line extension fee are moderate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims at reviewing research and presenting a research agenda on boards of directors in SMEs. While most publications about boards in SMEs focus on the lack of research in the area, this paper presents some of the work that has been conducted. Publications on boards of directors during the 1990s in outlets for SME research are reviewed. Boards of directors in small and medium-sized companies are getting increased attention, but the knowledge about boards in such companies is still fragmented. This paper presents research challenges based on a holistic model of directorates in SMEs that is elaborated from previous research about directorates. The papers selected for this special issue on boards of directors in SMEs are presented in this framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The period leading up to Brexit in the UK has led to foreign corporate subsidiaries having to mediate uncertainties and upheaval, forming part of broader regional resilience tendencies. The roles of subsidiaries, their corporate contexts, global production network positions and regional coupling are all heterogeneous, meaning that responses are likely to be disparate. Utilizing 'dynamic managerial capabilities' and subsidiary competences perspectives, this paper examines how subsidiaries have mediated Brexit and why certain actions are taken, and which is co-constituted with regional resilience. Twenty foreign subsidiaries within manufacturing sectors in the West Midlands and Wales are examined. In conclusion, the paper finds that Brexit mediation strategies have generally focused on seeking stasis through worst-case no-deal planning and preserving existing supply chains, indicating the dominance of 'adaptation' forms of regional resilience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]