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Operations strategy/global operations/value chain.

BA/Master level – the case can be applied to support operations strategy discussions related to the link between context, configuration and capabilities, and particularly to discuss internationalization strategy and global operations.

The case examines how Gabriel, a Danish textile company, transformed itself from being a traditional textile manufacturer to becoming an innovative virtual servi-manufacturer. The case covers the main milestones in Gabriel's recent history, explores the main reasons for the transformation that started in the late 1990s and studies how this transformation towards becoming a virtual servi-manufacturer was dealt with. The case closes with the sections examining the role of innovation activities in the newly transformed company.

The case is expected to build an understanding of the organisational and operational implications of the journey towards the virtual production company. While the case is broad in its scope, it provides an opportunity to go into details on a number of interrelated topics: operations strategy; global production networks; communication and coordination; interdependencies; and outsourcing and offshoring. The story of Gabriel illustrates a highly successful globalization journey and its underlying dynamics. The case highlights how the operations configuration and the relationships between key parties do not stay constant over time. They rather shift and adapt to internal and external stimuli. The case explores these stimuli in retrospect and describes how the company attempts to reconcile market requirements with its operations configurations and capabilities.

Teaching note.

Operations strategy/global operations/value chain.

BA/Master level – The case can be applied to support operations strategy discussions related to the link between context, configuration, and capabilities, and particularly to discuss internationalization strategy and global operations.

The case is initiated with an overview of the wider corporate and industrial context, which are included to supply contextual information pertinent to the understanding of competitive requirements and strategic choices of the company. The case then moves into establishing an understanding of the operationalization of these requirements and choices through a discussion of the structural configuration and organizational capabilities.

The case it expected to build an understanding of the fit between competitive priorities and their operationalization within structural and infrastructural decision areas.

Teaching note.

The ability of an organisation’s headquarters (HQ) to bring value to and manage a globally dispersed multinational enterprise has been questioned in the existing literature. The purpose of this paper is to suggest that HQ-subsidiary distance is an important factor that affects such ability; this report also investigates the impact of distance on the HQ’s network management capabilities in the context of a global organisation’s evolution.

In this study, a single company was chosen to take part in a retrospective, longitudinal case study that highlighted two embedded product cases. The concept of distance was viewed as a variety of distance dimensions existing between the HQ and its subsidiaries.

The results indicated that distance impacted the effectiveness of the HQ’s network management capabilities by affecting HQ-subsidiary interaction and, consequently, shaping HQ’s knowledgeability about the subsidiaries’ operations. Moreover, the results suggested that the impact of such distance may shift from positive to negative over the course of a global organisation’s evolution.

Although this study was explorative, some generalisability to industrial-goods companies of Scandinavian origin that have transferred activities to their owned subsidiaries may be expected. Further replication of the study using multiple case companies across various industries and countries is desirable.

This work extends the understanding of technological distance, sheds light on the conditions necessary for the HQ of a globally networked organisation to engage in value creation in the context of its evolution and contributes to the overall appreciation of distance as a factor that comprises multiple dimensions.

This paper is concerned with the realisation process of offshore outsourcing activities. The authors seek to understand the dynamic effects facing companies launching offshore outsourcing initiatives and to identify different types of mitigating efforts, which companies instigate to deal with these.

Two exploratory case studies are developed based on interviews, documents, and site visits.

The paper builds an understanding of patterns emerging from offshore outsourcing paths developments and discusses their organisational implications. It is proposed that the decision to dispatch standardised production tasks to parties overseas has implications over and beyond the initial intentions, which challenge the strategic scope and operationalisation of inter‐unit roles and responsibilities.

The paper suggests that the process, and particularly the mitigation‐oriented agency that take place as the process unfolds throughout the company, deserves a more significant space in future research of how companies learn to deal with outsourcing relationships. From this key lessons for practitioners are outlined, which prompt managers to work with the emerging realities of outsourcing relationships.

The study of the offshore outsourcing process is based on two in‐depth case studies providing rich illustrations of the process dynamics and how companies may start to work with these.

The principal objective of this paper is to relate functional nodes of production and innovation in global operations networks. The authors aim to capture the implications of changing strategic roles and locations of manufacturing for innovation capabilities.

The authors draw on the operations networks literature and use mixed methods of enquiry, including case studies, workshops and survey techniques. Part of the empirical base of the study is a series of workshops and an examination of 14 Danish companies that have experienced radical changes in their operations configurations. To provide a more complete view of these developments, the authors complement the qualitative methodology with a survey of an overall sample of 675 Danish and 410 Swedish companies.

On the basis of the findings from the survey, the series of workshops and case studies of Danish companies presented in this paper, the authors find that although the potential benefits of global dispersion of manufacturing are vast, the realisation of these potentials depends on how successful companies are with linking the new strategic roles and locations of manufacturing with innovation at their home base. The paper identifies and discusses groups of capabilities important to this link.

Three propositions are developed to advance the understanding of the role of cross-functional coordination and alignment, as well as their significance in the strategic initiatives of global dispersion of operations. The findings assist global companies in organising cross-functional coordination and interrelated functional nodes of production and innovation in global operations networks.

Not only routine transactional tasks but also more knowledge-intensive proprietary tasks cross both national and organisational borders. The challenge of coordination in these emerging configurations is imperative which has not been adequately addressed so far. By using mixed methods of inquiry, this paper provides a more complete view of the phenomenon and presents the main dilemmas underlying it.

The purpose of this paper is to advance the understanding of factors that affect offshoring performance results. To do so, this paper focuses on the access to location-specific advantages, rather than solely on the properties of the offshoring company, its strategy or environment. Assuming that different levels of synergy may exist between particular offshoring strategic decisions (choosing offshore outsourcing or captive offshoring and the type of function) and different offshoring advantages, this work advocates that the actual fact of realization of certain offshoring advantages (getting or not getting access to them) is a more reliable predictor of offshoring success.

A set of hypotheses derived from the extant literature is tested on the data from a quantitative survey of 1,143 Scandinavian firms.

The paper demonstrates that different governance modes and types of offshored function indeed provide different levels of access to different types of location-specific offshoring advantages. This difference may help to explain the ambiguity of offshoring initiatives performance results.

Limitations of the work include using only the offshoring strategy elements and only their limited variety as factors potentially influencing access to offshoring advantages. Also, the findings are limited to Scandinavian companies.

The paper introduces a new concept of access, which can help to more reliably predict performance outcomes of offshoring initiatives. Recommendations are also provided to practitioners dealing with offshoring initiatives.

The purpose of this paper is to unravel and assess current nearshoring practices and their outlook in the Baltic region.

The authors draw on the offshoring and outsourcing literature and use mixed methods of enquiry, including case studies, survey techniques and secondary statistical data. Part of the empirical base of the study is an examination of three Scandinavian firms that offshore their operations to vendors in the Baltics. To provide a more complete view of the practices and processes of offshoring in the region, the authors complement the case studies of Swedish and Danish manufacturers with a survey of 55 Lithuanian vendors and other statistical data.

The paper outlines the main drivers of nearshoring for Scandinavian manufacturing firms. Based on in‐depth insights into nearshoring initiatives, the authors elucidate how the initiatives evolved and what factors affected them. The survey results reveal the perspective of Lithuanian vendors regarding their relationships with Scandinavian partners. These findings are used in assessing the future prospects of nearshoring in the Baltic region.

The study relates the key attributes of Scandinavian companies' nearshoring practices to the perspectives of Lithuanian vendors. While the authors' discussion concentrates on how companies organise their operations in an increasingly global context, it also points to broader policymaking implications for the Baltic region.

The paper addresses the topic of nearshoring, which has thus far received limited attention in the management literature. By incorporating both the perspectives of offshoring and vendor companies, the paper provides a more complete view on the phenomenon and presents the main dilemmas underpinning it.

This paper focuses on the management of the learning curve in overseas capacity expansions. The purpose of this paper is to unravel the direct as well as indirect influences on the learning curve and to advance the understanding of how these affect its management.

The paper builds on the offshoring, capacity expansion and learning curve literature. The existing scholarship often lacks detailed insights into the factors surrounding the globalisation of production, and how constructing and operationalising new capacities overseas should be implemented. The paper employs qualitative methodology and draws on a longitudinal, factory-level analysis of an in-depth case study of a Danish wind turbine manufacturer.

This study goes beyond a simplistic treatment of the lead time and learning required to establish a new capacity. The authors examined the dimensions of the learning process involved in a capacity expansion project and identified the direct and indirect labour influences on the production learning curve. On this basis, the study proposes solutions to managing learning curves in overseas capacity expansions. Furthermore, the paper concludes with measures that have the potential to significantly reduce the non-value-added time when establishing new capacities overseas.

The paper uses a longitudinal in-depth case study of a Danish wind turbine manufacturer and goes beyond a simplistic treatment of the lead time and learning required to establish a new capacity.

The purpose of this paper is to shortly overview the research in international operations management (OM), to provide background to the papers published in this special section.

As a literature review, the paper investigates the past, present, and future of international OM. It is not a systematic review; the paper just highlights the most important international operational management research networks, streams and concepts in the field.

The paper finds that there is a time lag in the field of international OM compared to other research areas within international business and management. It provides some ideas for the future to be researched.

The paper gives a focused review on international research networks which has not been done before. It also identifies two different streams of researches in international OM: the stream investigating OM differences among geographical areas, and the stream dealing with issues of international manufacturing networks.

While innovative work practices (IWPs), such as self-directed teams and performance related pay, have become commonplace in firms around the world, little is known about their nature and effects in emerging market countries. This study uses new data collected from face-to-face interviews with large samples of workers from two manufacturing firms in Lithuania in 2005 mainly to investigate hypotheses concerning the effects of IWPs on firm and worker outcomes. In these cases we find: (i) the range of IWPs is limited though particular IWPs, notably self-directed teams, are strongly evident; (ii) in view of the historical legacy, the incidence of some outcomes, notably monitoring, was surprisingly high; (iii) typically self-directed teams positively impact worker outcomes, notably job satisfaction and employee involvement, though effects on monitoring and effort are less frequent; (iv) typically equity ownership and bonuses do not affect worker outcomes, though positive impacts on effort and peer monitoring sometimes are found; (v) the evidence for complementary effects of teams and performance pay or financial participation is very weak. In the main, these findings do not support the mutual gains theory that IWPs positively impact both firm and worker outcomes.