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Despite the widespread organisational adoption of e-procurement systems, we continue to witness disappointing performance outcomes from their implementation. This can be explained largely by the failure of many organisations to translate the initial adoption decision, made at an organisational level, into individual-level acceptance of e-procurement by an organisation’s employees. The purpose of this paper is to examine the key antecedents of the technology acceptance model (TAM) for employees expected to use e-procurement systems in their day-to-day activities.

In this study, the authors apply and extend the TAM to examine the factors that influence the acceptance of e-procurement by individual employees. The authors’ focus is on the potential role of user-perceived e-procurement quality dimensions as the antecedents to the TAM’s cognitive mechanisms of perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use. The structural equation model uses the survey data collected from 139 e-procurement users at a university in the Netherlands.

The results confirm the core TAM relationships within an e-procurement context. Extending the TAM model to explore the antecedents, the authors find that the e-procurement quality dimensions of processing, usability, and professionalism impact the levels of individual employee e-procurement acceptance. Interestingly, the system-level dimensions (processing and usability) appear to play a greater role than the support dimensions (professionalism) in these cognitive mechanisms.

The findings indicate that the need for e-procurement training and on-going support may be lessened by initial effective design covering system navigation and system usability and by ensuring that an e-procurement system has expedient information and product flows between the buyer and supplier.

To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to explore the TAM and, more critically, its antecedents within an e-procurement context. It is also the first to empirically validate this extended model. Finally, by shifting the focus from the more typical organisational-level adoption to an individual employee acceptance unit of analysis, the authors provide a better understanding of how organisations can gain the most from investments in e-procurement and other similar e-supply chain management technologies.

Powder bed fusion-laser beam (PBF-LB) is a rapidly growing manufacturing technology for producing Al-Si alloys. This technology can be used to produce high-pressure die-casting (HPDC) prototypes. The purpose of this paper is to understand the similarities and differences in the microstructures and properties of PBF-LB and HPDC alloys.

PBF-LB AlSi10Mg and HPDC AlSi10Mn plates with different thicknesses were manufactured. Iso-thermal heat treatment was conducted on PBF-LB bending plates. A detailed meso-micro-nanostructure analysis was performed. Tensile, bending and microhardness tests were conducted on both alloys.

The PBF-LB skin was highly textured and softer than its core, opposite to what is observed in the HPDC alloy. Increasing sample thickness increased the bulk strength for the PBF-LB alloy, contrasting with the decrease for the HPDC alloy. In addition, the tolerance to fracture initiation during bending deformation is greater for the HPDC material, probably due to its stronger skin region.

This knowledge is crucial to understand how geometry of parts may affect the properties of PBF-LB components. In particular, understanding the role of geometry is important when using PBF-LB as a HPDC prototype.

This is the first comprehensive meso-micro-nanostructure comparison of both PBF-LB and HPDC alloys from the millimetre to nanometre scale reported to date that also considers variations in the skin versus core microstructure and mechanical properties.

Despite significant investment in e-procurement by many organisations, perceived failings in the quality of such technologies and of the support provided to use them – termed here e-procurement quality – continue to generate resistance from internal customers who must assimilate e-procurement into their daily routines. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to advance the understanding of e-procurement quality from an internal customer perspective and to develop, refine, and validate construct measures.

Research was undertaken in the UK and the Netherlands incorporating a literature review, a qualitative study with 58 interviews, a quantitative study with 274 survey respondents, and a replication study with 154 survey respondents.

Analysis reveals that e-procurement quality comprises five universally applicable dimensions: processing, content, usability, professionalism, and training. A sixth dimension, specification, appears to be applicable, but context specific.

The study represents one of the most extensive investigations of e-procurement quality to date and is the first to examine its underlying dimensional structure. The multi-item scales developed and validated using a mixed-methods process are suitable for theory building and testing, as well as providing useful diagnostic value to practitioners.

Contemporary supply chain relationships inherently rely on delegation of work between organizations and, thus, are subject to agency problems for which a wide range of governance mechanisms exist. This review of agency theory (AT), across four distinct fields, explains the connection between governance mechanisms and supply chain relationship types.

The study uses a systematic literature review (SLR) of articles using AT in a supply chain context from the operations and supply chain management, general management, marketing, and economics fields.

The authors categorize the governance mechanisms identified to create a typology of agency relationships in supply chains.

The developed typology provides parsimonious theory on different forms of supply chain agency relationships and takes a step towards a “supply chain-oriented agency theory” explaining and predicting relationship types and governance in supply chains. Furthermore, a future research agenda calls for more accurate measuring of agency costs, to examine residual gains alongside residual losses, to take a dual-sided perspective of agency relations and to adopt AT to examine more complex supply networks.

The review provides a menu of governance mechanisms and describes situations under which these mechanisms could be deployed to guide managers when developing their supply chain relationships.

The first review to combine and elaborate views from four major disciplines using AT as a lens to supply chain relationships. Expanding the traditional set of governance mechanisms provides academics and practitioners with a bigger “menu” of options to consider.

The 3DCastleBenchy has been developed to facilitate wider adoption and use of additive manufacturing benchmarking artefacts which encourage both technical and non-technical users and designers to connect the growing number of technologies available. This tool will help people working with additive manufacturing to gain understanding of the limitations and design rules for each process.

Benchmarking is of critical importance for additive manufacturing, allowing for comparisons between technology capability, process optimisation and design guidelines. This work presents the 3DCastleBenchy, a design which balances aesthetic appeal and specific, measurable features which can be used for comparing various additive manufacturing processes.

The benchmark design was fabricated with three fundamentally different metal additive processes, laser-directed energy deposition (L-DED), laser powder bed fusion (L-PBF) and metal extrusion (MEX). These resulting parts were then analysed, thereby allowing common defects and limitations of each process to be identified, namely, the overhang limitations of traditional L-DED, the cracking that can occur in L-PBF and the deposition tool path artefacts present in MEX.

Existing benchmarks typically focus on either tolerance engineering features, or they are purely artistic/demonstrative pieces. The 3DCastleBenchy has been designed to find a balance between these objectives to facilitate communication of design for additive manufacturing concepts.

The purpose of this paper is to report on research into the impact of two sequential dimensions of strategic purchasing – purchasing recognition and purchasing involvement – on the development and deployment of dynamic capabilities. The authors also examine how such dynamic capabilities impact on both cost and innovation performance, and how their effects differ for service as opposed to manufacturing firms.

The authors test hypotheses using structural equation modeling of survey data from 309 manufacturing and service firms.

From a dynamic capability perspective, the analysis supports the positive relationships between purchasing recognition, purchasing involvement, and dynamic capability in the form of knowledge scanning. The authors also find support for the positive impact of knowledge scanning on both cost and innovation performance. From a contingency perspective, data supports hypothesized differences caused by industry, whereby service-based firms experience stronger positive linkages in our model than manufacturing-based firms. Finally, emerging from the data, the authors explore a re-enforcing effect from cost performance to purchasing involvement, something that is in line with the dynamic capabilities perspective but not typically addressed in operations management (OM) research.

The research offers a number of theoretical and managerial contributions, including being one of a relative few examples of empirical assessment of dynamic capability development and deployment; examining the enablers of dynamic capability in addition to the more commonly addressed performance effect; assessing the contingency effect of firm type for dynamic capabilities; and uncovering a return (re-enforcing) effect between performance and enablers of dynamic capabilities.

The purpose of this paper is to examine patient engagement in remote consultation services, an increasingly important issue facing Healthcare Operations Management (HOM) given the significant expansion in this and other forms of telehealth worldwide over the last decade. We use our analysis of the literature to develop a comprehensive framework that incorporates the patient journey, multidimensionality, antecedents and consequences, interventions and improvement options, as well as the cyclic nature of patient engagement. We also propose measures suitable for empirical assessment of different aspects of our framework.

We undertook a comprehensive review of the extant literature using a systematic review approach. We identified and analysed 63 articles published in peer-reviewed scientific journals between 2003 and 2022.

We conceptualise patient engagement with remote consultation across three key aspects: dimensions, process, and the antecedents and consequences of engagement. We identify nine contextual categories that influence such engagement. We propose several possible metrics for measuring patient engagement during three stages (before service, at/during service and after service) of remote consultation, as well as interventions and possible options for improving patient engagement therein.

The primary contribution of our research is the development of a comprehensive framework for patient engagement in remote consultation that draws on insights from literature in several disciplines. In addition, we have linked the three dimensions of engagement with the clinical process to create a structure for future engagement assessment. Furthermore, we have identified impact factors and outcomes of engagement in remote consultation by understanding which can help to improve levels of adoption, application and satisfaction, and reduce healthcare inequality. Finally, we have adopted a “cyclic” perspective and identified potential interventions that can be combined to further improve patient engagement in remote consultation.

Despite the unparalleled importance of value within healthcare, value-based models remain underutilised in the procurement of medical devices. Research is needed to understand what factors incentivise standard, low-priced device purchasing as opposed to value-adding devices with potentially higher overall health outcomes. Framed in agency theory, we examine the conditions under which different actors involved in purchasing decisions select premium-priced, value-adding medical devices over low-priced, standard medical devices.

We conducted 2 × 2 × 2 between-subjects scenario-based vignette experiments on three UK-based online samples of managers (n = 599), medical professionals (n = 279) and purchasing managers (n = 449) with subjects randomly assigned to three treatments: (1) cost-saving incentives, (2) risk-sharing contracts and (3) stronger (versus weaker) clinical evidence.

Our analysis demonstrates the harmful effects of intra-organisational cost-saving incentives on value-based purchasing (VBP) adoption; the positive impact of inter-organisational risk-sharing contracts, especially when medical professionals are involved in decision-making; and the challenge of leveraging clinical evidence to support value claims.

Our results demonstrate the need to align incentives in a context with multiple intra- and inter-organisational agency relationships at play, as well as the difficulty of reducing information asymmetry when information is not easily interpretable to all decision-makers. Overall, the intra-organisational agency factors strongly influenced the choices for the inter-organisational agency relationship.

We contribute to VBP in healthcare by examining the role of intra- and inter-organisational agency relationships and incentives concerning VBP (non-) adoption. We also examine how the impact of such mechanisms differs between medical and purchasing (management) professionals.

This paper presents the analysis from a study into the key lessons learned from e-procurement implementation across a range of UK public sector organisations. The literature relating to e-procurement implementation and operation is reviewed, identifying five main themes addressed by the current literature: impact on cost efficiency; the impact on the form and nature of supplier transaction; e-procurement system implementation; broader IT infrastructure issues; and the behavioural and relational impact of eprocurement. The research carried out was intended to explore the perceptions and reflections of both 'early' and 'late' adopters of e-procurement. Seven key lessons are drawn from the study and presented here. We conclude by proposing areas for further research, including the need for research into failed eprocurement projects.

The aim of this review and of the papers in this special issue is to critically examine different approaches to teaching operations management (OM) in order to provoke and stimulate educators within the discipline.

The papers within this special issue include empirical assessments of a problem‐based learning enterprise resource planning (ERP) simulation; a computer‐based learning tool for material requirements planning (MRP); a simulation of assembly operations; an operations strategy innovation game; an extension of the production dice game; an experiential teaching method in different class settings; and problem‐based assessment methods in OM. A variety of data are used to support these empirical studies, including survey, interview, and observational data.

The papers within the special issue support the argument that OM is well‐suited to more applied methods of teaching focusing on the application of subject knowledge to real‐life situations through a variety of techniques.

It is hoped that this review and the papers within this special issue act to stimulate educators to re‐evaluate their approaches to teaching OM and encourage them to consider adopting experiential teaching methods, business simulations, role‐plays, group exercises, live cases, and virtual learning environments, instead of, or in addition to, the more conventional lectures that typically dominate many OM modules around the world.

A special issue on teaching OM appears timely given the significant changes to both the university landscape and to the nature of the discipline that we have witnessed over the last quarter of a century.