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Small companies have limited management and financial resources and, although better quality assurance will in the longer term reduce manufacturing costs, many are intimidated by the set up and running costs of certification under an approved scheme such as BS 5750. The article describes the first year's operation of a pilot scheme intended to help small companies resolve these problems. Experienced quality managers, recruited by an academic institution and with the institution's backing, have acted as managers for a group of small companies on a shared cost basis. The experience gained from this scheme is discussed.

This study aims to mark the 50th anniversary of social marketing as an innovative social change discipline; this viewpoint reviews “epistemological diversity” within social marketing and calls for its incorporation in the expansion of the discipline.

Cognisant of the visible (e.g., gender, age, race) and invisible (e.g., epistemology, experience, socioeconomic status) dimensions of diversity, this viewpoint focuses on one invisible dimension of diversity – epistemology. Using secondary data, an epistemological review of social marketing is undertaken by selecting five aspects that serve as potential indicators: professional associations, global conferences, education and training, research and publication and practice. Several recommendations are made to expand epistemological diversity in social marketing.

The epistemological review of diversity within social marketing reveals disparities between the Global North and South. These disparities are due to varying opportunities for participation in associations, conferences, education and training, and research and publication. In addition, there exist “hidden” social change practitioners who implement programmes in the Global South that are consistent with social marketing practice, but continue to be unchronicled and unheralded.

For many years, social marketing scholars and practitioners have been working to expand the boundaries of the discipline, with a focus on theory and application. Although the authors acknowledge that diversity and equity are inherently central to this discipline, epistemological diversity, specifically as linked to the geographies of the Global South, has been largely overlooked. Our viewpoint nudges the social marketing community into including epistemological diversity in the ongoing discourse around broadening and deepening the discipline of social marketing.

The costs, benefits and implications of BS5750/ISO9000 certification for small and medium‐sized firms are investigated on the basis of a review of published literature and a survey of the actual experience of a representative sample of firms. The principle motivation for installing BS5750‐based quality systems appears to be customer pressure; retaining existing customers is a key benefit. A minority of firms discover that “internal” benefits, such as greater control and discipline, turn out to be more valuable. Developing and installing a BS5750‐based system is a major exercise for small firms but through reductions in quality costs, the costs of certification can typically be recovered within three years of commencing to operate the system. The attitude of the chief executive is a key determinant of effectiveness.

This monograph presents some findings, based on four pieces of work funded by the Department of Trade and Industry, on the influence of the National Quality Campaign on UK industry. Amongst the main conclusions are that the campaign material has been relatively successful in reaching its prime target of senior management, the majority of respondents have found the material to be useful and believe that the campaign has benefited their organisation in terms of increased awareness of the importance of total quality management and that few chief executives are actively involved in the process of quality improvement. It is also pointed out that respondents have been selective in their choice of material and chief executives were more discriminating than their subordinates. The selection of material appears to be dependent upon brochure content, respondents′ position in the organisational hierarchy and respondents′ perception of the relevance of material. There is little doubt that people have high expectations of Government in continuing to promote national awareness of quality management and disseminating quality‐related information. The monograph goes on to explore possible future initiatives along the lines of a Pan‐European dimension.

At present, manufacturing firms in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) are considering the adoption of quality control (QC) techniques. Conducts a survey to investigate the awareness of quality and to shed some light on the extent of the practice and content of the QC process in manufacturing firms in KSA.

The competition and challenges facing construction firms during the recent recession have brought risk management (RM) to the fore in people’s minds. Examination of the difficulties of implementing RM in small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the UK construction industry has been relatively untouched. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

As part of on-going research to facilitate RM processing aimed at improving the competitiveness of SMEs, the difficulties in RM implementation were identified through a literature review of RM implementation in SMEs. Postal questionnaire were sent to SMEs who have experience of construction management.

Of the 153 of SMEs responding, most highlighted that the main difficulty experienced is how to scale RM process to meet their requirements. None of the available standards explain the fundamental principle of applying RM to the situations that SMEs find themselves in. This difficulty is further exacerbated by a lack of management skills and knowledge in the adoption of RM tools or techniques to identify and analyse the business’ risks.

The identified difficulties can be considered to develop a process to facilitate RM process within SMEs.

This paper aims to present the vertical integration state-of-the-art and propose an expansion of the operations and supply chain management (OSCM) field by identifying gaps and bottlenecks.

This paper uses a systematic literature review based on a sample of 173 OSCM field articles, collected from Scopus and Web of Science databases.

There are no single factors, such as future costs, structures or skills development, in the decision to vertically integrate operations. It is necessary to combine the vision of production costs with the perspective of governance and transaction costs. In addition, it is essential to consider the competency perspective and its impact on capability building.

Few studies have attempted to understand how vertical integration is used in terms of OSCM research themes and theories. Vertical integration can help companies face challenges and serve as a potential solution for achieving better prices, demand control and quality management.

The significant role of vertical integration mechanisms in supply chains is crucial for managers evaluating a firm's reconfiguration with more vertical operations. Policymakers interested in supporting the smoothness of vertical integration decisions in regulatory agencies play a key role as contingencies.

In times of global challenges, vertical integration is a strategy known to be more effective for firms to obtain a competitive advantage, making them more resilient.

This paper addresses gaps in the vertical integration theme and provides insights for future research development.

Notes a broad agreement that small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) fulfil a critical role in modern economies, and therefore their ability to survive, remain competitive and produce high quality outputs is of utmost importance at both micro and macro levels. Focuses on total quality management (TQM), a new management paradigm, which is successfully competing with the well‐established paradigms such as scientific management. Argues that implementation of TQM principles can potentially help SMEs to enhance their robustness, as well as improve the quality of their final output. However, observes that, by comparison with the large organizations, SMEs have been slow in implementing TQM. Examines the differences between the characteristics of SMEs and large organizations; the relationship between the size of organization and inherent characteristics of TQM; and the effect of organization size on the implementation of TQM using deductive research. Using the case data, develops a ten‐step methodology for the implementation of TQM in SMEs.

The purpose of this paper is synthesise social marketing literature over the past fifty years and deliver a set of guiding tenets to propel social marketing’s agenda forward.

Across three strands, this paper amalgamates theoretical and practitioner evidence from social marketing. This synthesis commences with a review, summary and critical discussion of five decades of social marketing research. Across Strands 2 and 3, the authors review 412 social marketing interventions reported across 10 evidence reviews and 238 case studies.

This paper demonstrates social marketing’s use of fundamental marketing principles and capability to achieve behaviour change outcomes. Social marketers have built frameworks and processes that non-profit organisations, government agencies and policymakers seeking to enact change can use. This paper delivers five tenets that summarise the findings of the three strands and delivers research priorities for the next 50 years of social marketing research to drive the field forward.

Drawing on five decades of learning, this paper proposes research priorities that can be applied to refine, recalibrate and future-proof social marketing’s success in making the world a better place.

This paper demonstrates the value of social marketing science and helps bridge gaps between theory and practice, and further strengthens social marketing’s value proposition. This paper provides confidence that money invested in social marketing programs is well spent.

This paper delivers a forward-looking perspective and provides social marketing academics and practitioners with confidence that it can assist in overcoming society’s most pressing issues. The paper encompasses key social marketing literature since it was founded 50 years ago. Five tenets will guide social marketing forward: evidencing marketing principles, operationalisation of processes, principles and activities, implementing systems thinking, creating and testing marketing theory and guiding a new social marketing era.

Casting is one of the well-known manufacturing processes to make durable parts of goods and machinery. However, the quality of the casting parts depends on the proper choice of process variables related to properties of the materials used in making a mold and the product itself; hence, variables related to product/process designs are taken into consideration. Understanding casting techniques considering significant process variables is critical to achieving better quality castings and helps to improve the productivity of the casting processes. This study aims to understand the computational models developed for achieving better quality castings using various casting techniques.

A systematic literature review is conducted in the field of casting considering the period 2000–2020. The keyword co-occurrence network and word cloud from the bibliometric analysis and text mining of the articles reveal that optimization and simulation models are extensively developed for various casting techniques, including sand casting, investment casting, die casting and squeeze casting, to improve quality aspects of the casting's product. This study further investigates the optimization and simulation models and has identified various process variables involved in each casting technique that are significantly affecting the outcomes of the processes in terms of defects, mechanical properties, yield, dimensional accuracy and emissions.

This study has drawn out the need for developing smart casting environments with data-driven modeling that will enable dynamic fine-tuning of the casting processes and help in achieving desired outcomes in today's competitive markets. This study highlights the possible technology interventions across the metal casting processes, which can further enhance the quality of the metal casting products and productivity of the casting processes, which show the future scope of this field.

This paper investigates the body of literature on the contributions of various researchers in producing high-quality casting parts and performs bibliometric analysis on the articles. However, research articles from high-quality journals are considered for the literature analysis in identifying the critical parameters influencing quality of metal castings.

The systematic literature review reveals the analytical models developed using simulation and optimization techniques and the important quality characteristics of the casting products. Further, the study also explores critical influencing parameters involved in every casting process that significantly affects the quality characteristics of the metal castings.