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Significant transitions in firms (e.g. outsourcing) may impact the relative importance of production and inventory assets, affecting the hierarchical separation of planning decisions. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to planning literature by investigating how the production system and the planning environment influence the performance difference between hierarchical and monolithic planning. Further, it seeks to reduce the prevailing theory-practice gap in tactical planning.

Through an action research study, a monolithic model integrating tactical production planning decisions, subject to upstream supply chain constraints, with strategic investments decisions was developed, tested and implemented in a global OEM. Using the developed model and a measure of the capital cost of production assets relative to the cost of holding inventory, it is numerically examined how the production system and planning environment influence the performance of hierarchical and monolithic planning.

The research demonstrates the potential of integrating decisions and reveals significant performance differences between hierarchical and monolithic planning for firms with low capital cost relative to inventory holding cost.

The findings suggest a fit between planning processes, the production system and planning environment. Future research should empirically validate the findings and propositions.

The paper combine capital investments and production planning decisions, which usually transpire at different hierarchical levels and on different time-horizons, and investigates the consequences of hierarchical separation through a real-life validated case and numerical analysis.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how management attention and supply chain complexity affect the decision-making process and cost estimation accuracy of supply chain design (SCD) decisions.

The research follows an embedded case study design. Through the lens of the behavioural theory of the firm, the SCD decision process and realised outcomes are investigated through longitudinal data collection across ten embedded cases with varying degrees of supply chain decision-making complexity and management attention.

The findings suggest that as supply chain decision-making complexity increases, cost estimation accuracy decreases. The extent to which supply chain decision-making complexity is readily recognised influences the selection of strategies for information search and analysis and, thus, impacts resulting cost estimation errors. The paper further shows the importance of management attention for cost estimation accuracy, especially management attention based on conflicting goals induce behaviours that improve estimation ability.

A framework proposing a balance between supply chain decision-making complexity and management attention in SCD decisions is proposed. However, as an embedded case study the research would benefit from replication to externally validate results.

The method used in this study can identify how supply chain complexity is related to cost estimation errors and how management attention is associated with behaviours that improve cost estimation accuracy, indicating the importance of management attention in complex supply chain decision-making.

The purpose of this paper is to describe and categorise how current literature contributes to sales and operations planning (S&OP) research on how contextual variables affect S&OP design and to frame future areas for context-based S&OP research.

The method used was a systematic literature review. Studies for review were obtained through a keyword search of five relevant databases, manual searches of relevant journals and snowballing of citations in relevant papers. In total, 571 papers published between 2000 and 2017 were assessed, and 68 papers were included in the review.

The review found that S&OP design depends on industry, dynamic complexity, detail complexity and organisational characteristics. The findings of the literature review suggest that future research should study the roles of industry, complexity, system and process and organisational characteristics in S&OP design.

The findings revealed several gaps in the literature on context-dependent S&OP design. To address these gaps, an agenda for future S&OP contingency research is developed.

The findings revealed which contextual areas and specific S&OP design issues must be considered when designing and implementing S&OP.

This study focussed on identifying relevant research on S&OP design by analysing the contribution of literature to a research framework inspired by contingency-based research of operations and supply chain management.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of CEO narcissism in corporate acquisitions with a focus on frequency and size and furthermore to examine the subsequent stock market reaction.

The authors investigate 751 acquisitions made by 158 UK nonfinancial firms and 202 CEOs in the 10-year period 2007–2016. The authors use the ratio of first-person singular pronouns to total first-person pronouns in CEO speech as the main proxy for CEO narcissism but the results are robust to the use of signature size and picture as alternative measures.

The authors find that increased CEO narcissism is associated with an increase in M&A expenditures, an increase in deal size and a decrease in deal frequency. Thus, the authors find that narcissistic CEOs favor size over frequency (“go big”). Furthermore, the authors find that the stock market reacts less favorably to acquisitions announced by firms run by narcissistic CEOs.

The paper contributes to upper echelon research by investigating the association between CEO narcissism and corporate decisions in a UK setting. More specifically, the paper contributes to the existing literature by investigating how CEO narcissism is associated with corporate acquisitions in terms of the size and frequency of deals and how such irrational behavior is penalized by the stock market. Previous literature has focused on the more broad association between CEO narcissism and M&A expenditures.

The purpose of this paper is to present an experimental study which aims at assessing the potentially misleading effect of graphic elements on food packaging. The authors call these elements potentially misleading elements (PMEs) as they can give customers false expectations. They are either highlighted numerical information (30 per cent fibre, 8 per cent fat, 100 per cent natural […]) or pictorial information with no relation to the product (e.g. images of happy people).

In a combined decision task monitored by eye-tracking and a subsequence survey, the authors tested the impact of PMEs on common products. Combining different pairs of products, where one product had a PME, whereas the other did not, the authors could evaluate if preference correlated with the presence of a PME.

The authors found both types of PMEs to have analogous effects on participants’ preferences and correlate with participants’ visual attention. The authors also found evidence for a positive influence on a later explicit justification for the specific choice.

This study was conducted in a lab environment and solely related to health-related decisions. The authors still need to know if these findings are transferable to real in-store decisions and other needs such as high quality or low price. This calls for further research.

The topic is important for food companies, and it might become a priority in managing brand equity, combining consumer preferences, loyalty and communicative fairness.

Using eye-tracking and retrospective interviews brings new insights to consumer’s decision-making and how misleading potentially occurs.

The purpose of this paper is to examine, first, how social capital was crafted and transformed from a theoretical concept to an organizational tool for public sector improvement that was adopted by a Danish region and implemented in all regional hospitals. Second, the paper examines the application of social capital in one of these hospitals and, further, in a department of the hospital with the purpose of showing how it was applied by the managerial levels and responded to by the nurses of the department.

A Bourdieusian ethnographic approach was used for understanding the local and subjective understandings of social capital as well as the wider context in which the new tool was crafted.

Social capital as a tool for organizational improvement was constructed in a gray zone between science and consultancy. The paper demonstrates that the application of social capital in practice is connected with paradoxes because the concept is inherently ambiguous and Janus-faced in that its official representation is “soft” and voluntary with a working environment focus yet, it envelopes concealed steering intentions. These contrary working features of the concept produce a pressure on the department management and the nurses.

The explanatory critical framework combined with the ethnographic approach is a useful approach for theorizing and understanding social capital as an example of the emergence and consequences of new managerial tools in public organizations.

Lead user experiments are increasingly applied in food-related innovation. The purpose of this paper is to: first, experiments should excavate new recipes, production processes and narratives for mussels with a specific regional origin and connotation. Second, the study should test a lead user set-up and investigate the commitment and potential benefits, not only for future mussel producers but also for the lead users themselves.

This study organized and evaluated a lead user experiment involving eight chefs and other food experts.

The experiment was successful in the sense that the lead users activated a considerable combinatory knowledge ability and creativity, and they could address issues of wider regional branding significance and contribute with catching narratives. The lead users found the experiment beneficial on several dimensions, providing the opportunity to reflect and undertake tests under respectfully inquisitive observation of others, and they also appreciated the opportunity openly to expose their own professionalism on various media that were organized as ingredients in this experiment.

The study accentuates the applicability of lead user experiments as supplements or alternative to other ways of informing product development processes and demonstrates a practical method.

The study contributes to the increasing methodological evidence in the field of lead user-based innovation and scrutinizes the issues in a wider food industry context.