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The study aims to assess medical engagement levels at two teaching hospitals and a 500 bed private hospital in two states operated by the same health care provider and to describe individual and organisational factors that influence and change medical engagement.

A survey was emailed to all junior and senior medical staff, seeking responses to 30 pre-determined items. The survey used a valid and reliable instrument which provided an overall index of medical engagement. Qualitative data were also collected by including an open ended question.

Doctors (n = 810) working at all sites are in the top 20-40 percentile when compared to Australia and the United Kingdom. Two sites in one state were in the highest relative engagement band with the other being in the high relative range when compared to the (UK) and the medium relative band when compared to sites in Australia. Senior doctors working at all three were less engaged on feeling valued and empowered, when compared to having purpose and direction or working in a collaborative culture. This appears to be related to work satisfaction and whether they feel encouraged to develop their skills and progress their careers. Junior doctors at 1 site are much less engaged than colleagues working at another. Since their formal training pathways are identical the informal training experience appears to be an engagement factor.

Despite medical engagement being recognised as crucial, little is known about individual and organisational factors that support doctors to be engaged, particularly for juniors and in the private sector.

The efficiency-enhancing and performance-boosting benefits of lean six sigma (LSS) practices have been advocated in both academia and industry. However, their mediating and moderating effects remain unclear and the impact of LSS practices is underdeveloped in the Chinese context. Therefore, by focusing on publicly listed companies in China, this study aims to investigate whether, how and when LSS practices link to organizations’ innovation and financial performance.

Data from 66 Chinese publically listed companies spanning a period of 25 years (2000–2024) was analyzed using the difference-in-difference method which compared the changes in outcomes over time between a treatment group and a control group.

This research found that LSS practices are positively related to firm-level outcomes including innovation and financial performance. The authors also confirm the mediating effect of operational capability on these relationships. Moreover, the empirical evidence suggests that implementing the quality management systems (QMS) standard, ISO 9001, moderates the relationships between LSS practices and innovation and financial performance such that these relationships are stronger for firms in organizations with higher maturity levels in implementing the standard.

This study sheds light on LSS theory and offers valuable recommendations for lean managers on how to leverage LSS practices to improve their innovation and performance capabilities.

This research provides novel insights into the influence of LSS practices on firm-level outcomes such as the level of innovation and financial performance. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to theoretically propose and empirically validate how and when LSS practices influence firm outcomes by introducing the mediating mechanism of operational capability and the boundary condition of QMS standards.

It is widely considered that the advanced statistical quality improvement techniques (ASQIT) such as design of experiments and Taguchi methods form an essential part of the search for effective quality control. These quality improvement techniques are well established methodologies in which statisticians are formally trained. Research has shown that the application of these ASQIT for solving process quality problems by industrial engineers in manufacturing companies are limited and when applied they are often performed incorrectly. Presents a strategic and practical methodology with the aim of assisting industrial engineers to tackle manufacturing quality problems in a systematic and structured manner. The potential benefit of this practical methodology is its simplicity in usage and it is therefore readily accessible to the engineering fraternity for solving quality problems in real life situations. Also highlights the results of five industrial case studies which were used to validate and refine the methodology.

Despite the global success of Lean Six Sigma (LSS) operations, they are frequently criticised for failing to improve a company’s financial performance. This study investigated and contrasted the financial advantages of LSS, Industry 4.0 (I4.0) and Lean Six Sigma 4.0 (LSS4.0) practices in China and the United States.

We conducted statistical analyses using online databases. We applied regression analysis to quantitatively analyse 32,813 responding organisation data from 3,691 A-share manufacturing companies in China and 5,931 responding organisation data from 570 publicly traded manufacturing firms in the United States.

This study discovered the following findings: (1) American companies are paying less attention to LSS, which is gradually becoming more important in Chinese business strategy. (2) There is a strong positive relationship between LSS implementation and financial performance in China. Nonetheless, the financial impact of LSS is less significant in post-industrial countries such as the United States. (3) There is compelling evidence in the Chinese context for the significant impact of higher LSS maturity levels on the financial performance of publicly traded manufacturing firms. However, the financial benefits of higher LSS maturity levels in the United States are less pronounced. (4) Despite frequent discussions in China and the United States, implementing I4.0 and related technologies has yet to yield the desired results, particularly in the United States. (5) LSS4.0 significantly improves organisational financial performance.

This study explored the impact of LSS, I4.0 and LSS4.0 on financial performance and conducted an international comparative study from a big data perspective.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the profitability of European Union (EU) firms with the aim of confirming the mean‐reverting pattern documented by earlier research in the USA. In addition, the paper classifies firms by industry sectors across countries to investigate potential differences.

The paper follows closely a model where the forecasting of profitability is done through year‐by‐year regressions. This approach allows the use of large samples and the year‐by‐year variation in the slopes. Both a linear and a nonlinear partial adjustment models are used for forecasting profitability.

Findings show that the profitability does follow a mean‐reverting process and that profitability forecasting can be improved substantially by exploiting the mean‐reverting feature. Further analysis shows that mean reversion does not play an important role in EU countries as in the USA and there is no evidence of nonlinearity in mean reversion. It was also found that mean‐reverting speed differ across industries, with utilities, financial and manufacturing among the lowest.

The sample companies are not originated from a single economy, but from 15 different countries with different macro‐economic conditions that might influence their profitability.

Studying the European market, where the institutional and financial structure of firms are different from the USA allows us to observe whether the US results are sample specific or can be generalized and applied elsewhere. The difference observed in these sample results is probably due to the fact that the US economy is more competitive than that of EU.

The purpose of this paper is to examine new product development (NPD) financial performance enablers through examining the roles of NPD capabilities improvement, NPD knowledge sharing and NPD internal learning in manufacturing organisations in Jordan.

Based on relevant literature review on NPD performance, a structured questionnaire was developed to collect data related to NPD performance measures. Questionnaires were distributed to a sample of 558 manufacturing organisations in Jordan, out of which 355 were returned and valid for the analysis. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were applied to reveal NPD performance success dimensions that manufacturing organisations use to assess NPD performance success. Then, path analysis was employed to examine the research model and test its hypotheses.

The study’s findings reveal that manufacturing organisations use a multidimensional construct for assessing NPD performance success, which consists of NPD financial performance, NPD internal learning, NPD capabilities improvement, NPD knowledge sharing, and NPD marketing performance. NPD capabilities improvement exerted a positive and significant effect on each of NPD internal learning, NPD knowledge sharing, and NPD marketing performance, respectively. NPD knowledge sharing exerted a positive and significant effect on each of NPD internal learning NPD marketing performance. Each of NPD internal learning and NPD marketing performance exerted a positive and significant effect on NPD financial performance. The structural findings also indicate that 38.1 per cent (R2 is 0.381) of NPD financial performance is explained by the path of NPD capabilities improvement, NPD knowledge sharing and NPD marketing performance, which is the strongest path in the empirical model.

The paper’s focus on manufacturing organisations limits its contribution to the manufacturing sector only. The services sector is a rich field for understanding NPD financial performance enablers in various service industries. Further, the paper focusses on only five dimensions of NPD performance success, other dimensions of NPD performance success might add more insights to their effect on NPD performance success measures especially their effect on organisational performance.

The findings of this study provide managers of manufacturing organisations with empirical insights related to the multidimensionality of NPD and their complex relationships to enhance NPD financial performance. The empirical findings assist managers to assess their NPD strategies, processes and implementation based on a results-oriented approach. The major contribution of the study is identifying the strongest paths of NPD financial performance enablers which reveals the complexity and criticality of NPD capabilities improvement, NPD knowledge sharing and NPD marketing performance on NPD financial performance. The rationale is NPD financial performance is still the most important NPD performance success dimension amongst manufacturing organisations.

The originality of this paper stems from developing and testing a multidimensional model of NPD financial performance enablers for the first time in emerging markets, Jordan. NPD financial performance is a function of other areas of NPD performance dimensions, namely; NPD capabilities improvement, NPD knowledge sharing and NPD marketing performance. This empirical evidence is provided to managers for the first time by this study.

Although corporate restructuring has the potential to provide performance benefits to firms, it can also bring upheaval and challenges to the restructuring firms’ employees. Further, the frequency of corporate restructuring across the business landscape shows no signs of abating. The purpose of this review paper is to identify and synthesize what is known about the selection, implementation and outcomes of the human resource management (HRM) practices that firms deploy in the context of corporate restructuring, with the additional aim of distilling fertile research areas for scholars and best-practice guidance for practitioners.

This paper is based upon a systematic review of 110 articles published in highly-ranked, peer-reviewed journals from 2003 to 2023.

This review surfaces the predominant ability-, motivation- and opportunity-enhancing HRM practices employed by restructuring firms. It further elucidates the major themes and challenges associated with the use and outcomes of these practices across firms and restructuring settings. The analysis illuminates gaps and opportunities in the literature to suggest future directions for the study of HRM practices and corporate restructuring.

This paper identifies, categorizes and integrates the extant literature on HRM practices and outcomes in corporate restructuring, which is a topic that is salient to both researchers and managers. Papers are classified using the Ability, Motivation and Opportunity framework. An inclusive definition of corporate restructuring, which includes organizational, portfolio, governance and financial restructuring, is applied across two decades of research to provide a comprehensive and holistic assessment.

This study aims to fully assess the readiness for Lean Six Sigma (LSS) and Quality Performance Improvement (QPI) in an Italian Public Healthcare ecosystem.

Drawing from previously established survey development and adaptation protocols, a replication study was carried out; Lean, Six Sigma and QPI were extracted and validated through confirmatory factor analysis in an Italian Public Healthcare setting, with a sample of health professionals from the Campania region.

This study reports the adaptation of an existing scale for measuring LSS and QPI in an Italian public healthcare organisation. This analysis extracts six conceptual domains and constitutes an original adaptation of an existing scale to assess the readiness to adopt Lean, Six Sigma and Quality Performance in Italian Public Health Organizations. The constructs show strong levels of internal consistency, as demonstrated by each item factor loading and each subscale reliability.

Managers, policymakers and academics can employ the proposed tool to assess the public healthcare ecosystem’s capability to implement LSS initiatives and strategies to improve quality performance.

This is one of the first studies to assess cross-regional organisational readiness for LSS and QPI in an Italian Public Healthcare environment at this scope and level.

Rhetoric has long had a bad reputation, as synonymous with “false and empty speech”. In the last century, rhetoric has undergone an important reappraisal, which has seen it applied also to corporate communication, corporate social responsibility (CSR), and, most recently, sustainability communication. However, the bad reputation that rhetoric has accumulated over the years continues to weigh on the legacy of the discipline, creating theoretical and methodological bias. This research represents a work that aims to map and systematize the academic literature related to rhetorical analysis in the context of CSR and sustainability communication. After a systematic literature review, a state-of-art literature mapping was carried out in order to create typological clusters of current approaches within traditional rhetoric theory, holding firm the assumption that the rhetorical discipline should be considered as a set of reasoned and structured techniques useful for corporate discourse and its persuasive effectiveness. The analysis has enlightened wide academic research regarding the study of rhetoric in corporate communications studies clustered in six typologies of topic endorsed by a specific goal that rhetoric would have in the studies.

This study aims to explore the dynamic interplay of key resources (i.e. research and development (R&D), advertising and exports) in affecting the performance of USA manufacturing firms. Specifically, the authors examine the dynamic impact of joint resources and predict differential effect scales contingent on firm capabilities.

This study presents a combined multiple regression analysis (MRA)-multilayer perceptron (MLP) neural network modeling and investigates the complex interlinkage of capabilities, resources and performance. As an innovative approach, the MRA-MLP model investigates the effect of capabilities under the combinatory deployment of joint resources.

This study finds that the impact of joint resources and synergistic rents is not uniform but rather distinctive according to the combinatory conditions and that the pattern is further shaped by firm capabilities. Accordingly, besides signifying the contingent aspect of capabilities across a range of resource combinations, the result also shows that managerial sophistication in adaptive resource control is more than a managerial ethos.

The proposed analytic process provides scientific decision support tools with control mechanisms with respect to deploying multiple resources and setting actionable goals, thereby presenting pragmatic benchmarking options to industry managers.

Using the theoretical underpinnings of the resource-based view (RBV) and resource orchestration, this study advances knowledge about the complex interaction of key resources by presenting a salient analytic process. The empirical design, which portrays holistic interaction patterns, adds to the uniqueness of this study of the complex interlinkages between capabilities, resources and shareholder value.