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Successful supply chain management requires a change from managing individual functions to integrating activities into the key supply chain process. The advantages far outweigh the effort involved in accessing the final product; a seamless supply chain that operates fluidly and benefits the entire chain. In this paper, the merit of supply chain and B2B is discussed, and the impacts on each other identified. With the groundwork built, the concept of B2B marketplaces as the participating units in a supply chain process in order to enhance the business process is employed. Virtual enterprises can use this extended form of supply chain as its building‐blocks.

Existing shape‐based fuzzy clustering algorithms are all designed to explicitly segment regular geometrically shaped objects in an image, with the consequence that this restricts their capability to separate arbitrarily shaped objects. The purpose of this paper is to introduce a new detection and separation of generic‐shaped object algorithm.

With the aim of separating arbitrary‐shaped objects in an image, this paper presents a new detection and separation of generic‐shaped objects (FKG) algorithm that analytically integrates arbitrary shape information into a fuzzy clustering framework, by introducing a shape constraint that preserves the original object shape during iterative scaling.

Both qualitative and numerical empirical results analysis corroborate the improved object segmentation performance achieved by the FKG strategy upon different image types and disparately shaped objects.

The proposed FKG algorithm can be highly used in applications where object segmentation is necessary. Likewise, this algorithm can be applied in Moving Picture Experts Group‐4 for real object segmentation that is already applied in synthetic object segmentation.

Extant literature has looked at the effect of alliance capability and organizational culture on alliance portfolio performance, but the relationship between the two has not been explored. The purpose of this paper is to explore the hypothesis that an alliance supportive culture is not only fostered by a firm’s alliance capabilities, but that it mediates the relationship between capabilities and performance.

Survey responses from 190 alliance managers, collected using a two-stage process, were analyzed to investigate the interrelationship of firm-level alliance capability, alliance supportive culture and portfolio performance.

Alliance supportive culture was found to mediate the relationship between alliance capability and alliance portfolio performance. This finding suggests that in order to effectively manage a firm’s portfolio of alliances, the benefits of alliance capability must be transferred broadly into the organization’s cultural orientation toward alliances.

Further research may extend this analysis to explore the effect of subcomponents of alliance capability and alliance culture to better understand fine-grained influences on alliance performance. The findings of this study also may be extended to inform how supportive culture orientation affects partner selection, negotiation and time to performance.

Managers should utilize culture-building actions as a way of extending the value of their firms’ alliance capabilities in order to improve their effectiveness across the portfolio.

Extant studies have considered the discrete effects of capability and cultural orientation on alliance portfolio success, but the mediation effect has not previously been investigated. The findings also identify a boundary condition for the benefit of alliance capabilities on portfolio performance.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze households’ acquisition of healthy food away from home (FAFH) from restaurants. Specifically, determinants of households’ decision to purchase healthy FAFH, the share of households’ FAFH expenditures allocated to healthy FAFH and the share of households’ FAFH calories obtained from healthy items are identified.

Using data from the National Household Food Acquisition and Purchase Survey, the UK Food Standards Agency’s Nutrient Profiling Model is used to classify the healthfulness of households’ FAFH purchases. A double-hurdle model is estimated to identify determinants of households’ decision to purchase healthy FAFH and the share of their FAFH expenditures and calories allocated to healthy items.

Households’ acquisition of healthy FAFH varies with income, food assistance, FAFH purchase frequency, dieting, restaurant type, household composition, region and season. There is little difference in the impact of these factors on healthy FAFH expenditure shares vs calorie shares, suggesting that healthy FAFH expenditures proxy the contribution of healthy FAFH to a households’ diet.

Results suggest that increased availability of healthy FAFH may need to be supplemented by targeted advertising and promotions, revisions to nutrition education programs, improved nutrition information transparency and value pricing in order to improve the dietary quality of households’ FAFH acquisitions.

This study is the first to analyze household acquisition of healthy FAFH.

On 20 April ISHM‐Benelux held its 1988 Spring meeting at the Grand Hotel Heerlen. This meeting was totally devoted to implantable devices, in particular to the technologies used for these high reliability, extremely demanding devices. For this meeting ISHM‐Benelux was the guest of the Kerkrade facility of Medtronic. Medtronic (headquartered in Minneapolis, USA) is the world's leading manufacturer of implantable electronic devices. Apart from the assembly of pacemakers and heart‐wires, the Kerkrade facility acts as a manufacturing technology centre for Medtronic's European facilities.

The aim of this paper is to analyze the way in which organizational culture affects alliance performance. The literature has begun to focus on intra-firm antecedents of alliance success, but so far has mainly focused on structural aspects like the presence of an alliance department. This paper proposes that interrelated processes of sense-making in alliances and sense-making about alliances shape organizational culture to make it more supportive of alliances.

A survey was developed to operationalize an alliance supportive culture construct. Results from 179 alliance managers were analyzed to investigate the inter-relationship of alliance experience, alliance supportive culture and alliance performance.

Alliance supportive culture was found to fully mediate the relationship between alliance experience and performance. This finding suggests that experience with alliances leads to better alliance performance when this experience is translated into the organizational culture.

Further research may explore how alliance culture interacts with structural elements of alliance management as identified in the alliance capability literature. The interaction between alliance culture and alliance capability is as yet unexplored. In addition, research may take place to explore which elements determine sense-making about alliances.

Managers should not only focus on tools and processes to improve their alliance success. They should also augment the sense-making process about alliances and remove cultural impediments to working with alliances.

Many studies have found a relationship between alliance experience and success. This paper shows this is not a direct relationship, but that it operates via cultural change based on sense-making about alliance experience. This mediation effect has not been established before.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the fundamentals of a performance measurement system (PMS), in order to ascertain if they satisfy the measurement requirements of business process management (BPM) by means of a systematic review of the literature.

The paper uses meta‐analysis to systematically review and examine existing BPM and PMS from the business, non‐business and public sectors. A specific methodology using categorization concept was used to select the appropriate articles. In total, 42 relevant articles are selected and later analyzed. A subsequent content analysis of the information obtained is applied to identify the gaps in the current literature.

The growing interest in PMS has produced an extraordinarily large numbers of papers on the topic. This paper found that, by and large, the PMS as advocated by various authors for over 20 years (since 1990) failed to fulfill the measurement requirements of BPM. This is alarming, considering that past critics of PMS have indicated that the weaknesses of PMS in relation to BPM applied only in isolated or specific situations such as information technology (IT). These findings dispel the notion that a PMS is a prerequisite to the introduction of an effective BP in organizations.

This paper has identified the gaps (weaknesses) of current PMS in meeting the measurement requirements of BPM. This paper proposes a theoretical integrated framework which encompasses a management system, that combines with a measurement system and business processes, and which can be implemented using the popular value‐chain methodology to measure and compare performance within BP organizations.

The results presented contribute towards providing an updated overview of the current state of research into PMS and its relevance to BPM, in order to identify existing research gaps, issues and concerns upon which ongoing and future research efforts on this topic can be built.