Search results

Though there is a wide acceptance of the strategic importance of integrating operations with suppliers and customers in the supply chain, many questions remain unanswered about how best to characterize supply chain strategies. Is it more important to link with suppliers, customers, or both? Similarly, little is known about the connections between supplier and customer integration and improved operations performance. This article seeks to investigate supplier and customer integration strategies by comparing US and East Asian companies. It is of paramount interest to find out how these strategies actually differ and affect performance of the companies.

This was carried out in three phases. In the first phase, a number of operations‐management related journals were skimmed to select about 30 research articles related to supply chain concepts and practices. In the second phase, investigation efforts narrowed down to supply chain management research conducted in East Asia and the USA. In the third phase, comparisons were made between East Asian and US companies' indicators of supply chain integration and performance.

The need to react to market changes and the critical role of the supply chain in meeting this need, and the potential benefits of integrating the supply chain, can no longer be ignored. This potential, however, will be realized only if the interrelationships among different parts of the supply chain are recognized, and proper alignment is ensured between the design and execution of the company's competitive strategy.

The implications for article findings on future research and practice in the new millennium are considered.

The aim is to recommend these findings to companies which are still at the infancy stage when it comes to supply chain management and integration with customers and suppliers.

The purpose of this paper is to shed light on the body of logistics customer service (LCS) research published in leading logistics journals from 1990 to 2017. Specifically, the paper presents a call to arms for logistics and supply chain researchers to address new and emerging issues impacting customer service in the age of omnichannel and e-commerce retailing.

The authors reviewed academic journals to identify articles focusing on LCS from 1990 through 2017. The authors noted trends in academic research activity/focus and supplemented the findings by examining more recent trends covered in trade publication articles.

The authors observed a large amount of LCS research in the early 1990s and 2000s, but noticed a substantial decline in coverage within academic journals since the late 2000s while industry continues to give customer service issues even greater attention. The difference between the level of coverage within academic journals and the increased importance firms place on customer service represents a critical gap and opportunity for scholars. This research represents a “call to arms” to address this gap. With particular emphasis on observed customer impatience and escalating requests, within omni- and e-commerce channels of distribution, we suggest greater theoretical insights into customer service strategies and their role in successfully navigating today’s changing logistics service environment are needed.

The review serves as a call for more attention to customer service issues within leading logistics journals. Suggestions for research into new and emerging topics are offered.

The concept of customer value is becoming increasingly used in strategy and marketing literature in recent years. Customer value is considered central to competitive advantage and long‐term success of business organizations. Consequently, a great importance attached to this concept. This paper attempts to build an integrative configuration of the concept of customer value that reflects its richness and complexity. It reviews, synthesizes and extends the literature on the subject. The configuration includes three complementary models, namely: customer value in exchange, customer value buildup, and customer value dynamics. Thinking about customer value in this way is helpful in the designing of and studying service offerings.

The purpose of this paper is to obtain a better understanding of the extent to which lean production permeates manufacturing companies in Malaysia by drawing on supply chain management (SCM) managers' or production managers' perception of lean production practices and level of performances in the industry.

The instrument used in this study is a structured survey questionnaire consisting of two major parts. The first part comprises several variables measuring lean production practices, and the second part consists of several performance measurements. Sample companies are chosen from Malaysian manufacturing companies listed in the Federation of Malaysian Manufacturers directory. From the 300 companies sampled, 200 responses were completed, representing a 67 per cent response rate.

The results support the conceptual model, demonstrating strong association between lean production, product quality performance, and business performance. The structural equation modelling (SEM) results reveal that “reduced setup time” appears to be of primary importance in the linkage between lean production, product quality performance and business performance. It is also instructive, from a score of 67.21 on the Malaysian Lean Production Index (MLPI), that manufacturing companies in Malaysia must marshal their effort to implement a more effective lean production SCM in order to improve on product quality performance and business performance.

This research adds to the body of knowledge on lean production SCM in manufacturing industry. This paper may be of particular interest to practicing production managers, or SCM managers, as it suggests what factors should be emphasized in lean production.

The originality of this paper lies within the context in which this study is undertaken as it seeks to address key relationships between lean production, product quality performance and business performance within the Malaysian manufacturing industry, where relatively few studies are available. In addition, relationships between constructs are analyzed through SEM that measures not only magnitude but also the causal direction of the relationships.

Explains that benchmarking ‐ the process of identifying superior performance or practices of other organizations and internalizing such knowledge for competitive advantage ‐ is performed typically on a project‐by‐project basis. Argues that a better understanding of benchmarking at the project level would help to reveal reasons for successful benchmarking at the organizational level. Develops a conceptual model to address the question of how characteristics of benchmarking teams and partner organizations impact on benchmarking project outcomes. The model focuses on the interaction of key teamwork and organizational variables, and provides a basis for empirical testing of benchmarking project implementation effectiveness.

It is well known that service quality, customer satisfaction and customer value are becoming the most important factors of business success for either manufacturers or service providers. However, many different conclusions have been reached and related studies are rather fragmented, especially with regard to customer value. Furthermore, there are few related studies with service quality, customer satisfaction and customer value and their influences on customers’ future behaviors in the telecommunication industry as the focus. In this paper, attention is paid to the measurement model of service quality in China’s mobile phone market based on the well‐known SERVQUAL model, but with modification on the basis of focus group discussions and expert opinions to reflect the specific industry attributes and the special culture of China. Emphasis is then paid to the study of the dynamic relationships among service quality, customer value, customer satisfaction and their influences on future behaviors after the key drivers of customer value and customer satisfaction are identified. All of them are based on the development of structural equation models by using PLS‐GRAPH Package.

In the behavioural science areas of psychology and consumer behaviour, the means‐end value hierarchy model has often been applied to understand individuals’ values structures ‐ in particular, the value of a company’s product/ service offering to its customers. Applying the means‐end value hierarchy model in a logistics context, logistics customer value can be thought of as a higher‐order evaluative standard for customers’ satisfaction and service quality evaluation processes. As such, it is important for a firm to know what its customers value when seeking to build a competitive advantage. Attempts to advance our understanding of logistics customer value through the application of the means‐end value hierarchy model to logistics. More specifically, investigates the customer value of logistics service in a business‐to‐business setting using the means‐end value hierarchy model. Uses focus group interview data for developing the customer value hierarchy.

University‐based executive education is big business, attracting the attention and resources of senior management in organisations. Surprisingly, a limited amount of research has been directed at the attendees themselves and even less research uses theory to understand the activity. This study targets executive attendees (n=245) and applies an action frame of reference to more deeply understand the issues surrounding their attendance at these programmes. Without that clear understanding, it is impossible to know if the time and money for this activity is being properly allocated.

In this paper, we study partial identification of the distribution of treatment effects of a binary treatment for ideal randomized experiments, ideal randomized experiments with a known value of a dependence measure, and for data satisfying the selection-on-observables assumption, respectively. For ideal randomized experiments, (i) we propose nonparametric estimators of the sharp bounds on the distribution of treatment effects and construct asymptotically valid confidence sets for the distribution of treatment effects; (ii) we propose bias-corrected estimators of the sharp bounds on the distribution of treatment effects; and (iii) we investigate finite sample performances of the proposed confidence sets and the bias-corrected estimators via simulation.

In recent years, a number of privileged individuals have entered the music industry in Zimbabwe, either as performers or entrepreneurs. The economic challenges in the country may have prompted these individuals to invest in music as a means of diversifying their income or exploring new business opportunities. To determine whether their interest in music is driven by entrepreneurship or genuine passion, a scholarly examination was deemed necessary.

A qualitative research approach with semi-structured interviews was used as the data collection technique. Narrative analysis was conducted on a sample of musicology students in Gweru, Zimbabwe.

The findings revealed the nepo babies’ interest in music is driven by legacy continuation – the responsibility to carry on with the name of the parent – harsh economic conditions, capitalizing on Internet and digital opportunities and mechanisms for psychological satisfaction during hardships.

Although there is a wide range of literature on musicpreneurship, there are gaps in studies that have examined whether a nepo baby's interest in music is motivated by musicpreneurship or a genuine passion for it. Therefore, the aim of this research is to contribute to the existing body of literature on African musicpreneurship, with a specific focus on Zimbabwe.