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The purpose is to provide an intellectual history of Operations Management, particularly noting recent developments and its underlying continuity with earlier systems and thinking. Operations Management as a discipline identifies its “modern” incarnation as dating from the 1960s when it became more rigorous and managerially focused. This re-invention constructed a “narrative” that the profession still follows, yet a critical perspective reveals significant, though under-appreciated continuity with earlier theory and practice.

This paper presents a comprehensive literature review and comparative analysis of historic developments in management and academia.

In the early 1900s, F. W. Taylor’s Shop Management established Operation Management, but its main component, Scientific Management, had stagnated by the 1950s. At that point, the rise of Management Science both reinvigorated Operations Management and threatened it with a competing new discipline. To compete Operations Management then modernized by redefining itself, reasserting its interest in several areas and co-opting Operational Research tools for those. It also contracted, withdrawing from areas considered vocational, or more suited to Industrial Engineering.

This historical overview shows the critical importance of drawing research agenda from practical managerial concerns.

Practitioners benefit from the intellectual rigor that academics provide and a historical perspective shows that the relationship has been mutually beneficial.

The disciplines of Operations Management, Operations Research and Industrial Engineering are complementary and competitive in addressing many problems that transcend their boundaries, and use common ideas and techniques. The demands of “academic rigor” have had a deleterious effect on the practical managerial relevance of these disciplines.

A long-term, cross-disciplinary perspective provides a unique understanding of the research interests and practical orientations of these disciplines.

The authors explore the potential of machine learning, computers employ that an algorithm to sort data, make decisions and then continuously assess and improve their functionality. They suggest that it be used to power a radical redesign of company processes that they call machine reengineering.

The authors interpret a survey of more than a thousand corporate public agency IT professionals on their use of artificial intelligence and machine learning.

Companies that embrace machine learning find that it adds value to the work product of their employees and provides companies with new capabilities.

Working together with an intelligent machine, workers become custodians of powerfully smart tools, tools that personalize work to maximize their most productive ways of working.

A guide to establishing a culture that empowers employees to thrive alongside intelligent machines.

The purpose of this paper is to describe and analyse a historic performance-based pay system used in 1803-1810 to reward Marc Isambard Brunel for his innovative engineering designs used in the Portsmouth Block Mills. This was used to ensure that Brunel would continue his work on the project once the design was complete to resolve any problems and make any desirable improvements to the machines and the system as a whole.

This research analyses archived correspondence between the project’s initiators: the Navy Board and Samuel Bentham along with the Admiralty as well as Marc Brunel. Basic financial analyses are applied to the historic cost and investment data.

The scheme was well designed and successfully kept Brunel involved in the implementation and operational phases of the project. However, there were numerous problems that delayed the project’s completion, thereby creating additional work for Brunel and also delaying and reducing his payments. Brunel was alienated by these developments.

This research has exploited the archived data as fully as possible, and although there are no known deficiencies in the records, it would be desirable to have more complete and detailed information on the investment in, and operations of, the factory.

Reward systems should be designed and implemented so that events outside management’s and worker’s control should not disadvantage either group.

Detailed information about the operations and financial performance of an early factory are analysed in depth. These reveal how management and an innovative engineer interacted regularly over several years with numerous insights on their day-to-day relations.

The Arsenale was the largest medieval industrial enterprise, famous for its assembly line. Management faced extreme variations between peace-time and war-time demands. Satisfying these unpredictable and sudden demands for a large, complex product with a multiple years–long production cycle was challenging. The purpose of this study is to analyze the Arsenale’s operations and supply chain arrangements, and to identify and assess their management policies. We also track its development and investigate its influence on other countries.

The research methodology used is archival research with content analysis of text and graphic representations of production processes.

These reveal that Venice’s supply chain management evolved from simply exploiting woodlands as needs arose, to a managed forest with planned planting, cultivation and harvesting, ending with the active modification of growing trees so their natural growth was artificially shaped to satisfy production requirements. Instead of fabricating components in their factory, the Venetians formed them by shaping the trees while they were still growing. These arboriculture techniques then provided a planned and regular supply of high-quality components that purely natural processes provided only randomly.

There may be undiscovered archival documents despite the authors’ best efforts. The development of this historic supply chain reflects modern managerial concerns.

Modern restorations of historic ships and buildings use some of the fabrication methods identified, although the more intensive techniques would require higher volume production.

This reveals historical forestry practices emphasised long-term needs and sustainable use.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is a unique long-term investigation of an integrated production system and considers its influence on Iberian, French, British and American forestry and ship building. The close integration of production requirements with forestry practices was a novel finding.

Cluster management organizations (CMOs) have emerged over the past few decades as intermediaries that support the competitiveness of place-based clusters of economic activity. Despite their economic origins, policymakers are now starting to experiment with a broader use for cluster policies that seeks to leverage CMOs to tackle societal challenges in approaches aligned with the concept of creating shared value (CSV). However, there remains a void in conceptual understanding around the specific roles that CMOs might play in overcoming the barriers faced by their members for CSV, which this paper aims to address. Bridging this gap presents an opportunity for cluster practitioners and policymakers in a context in which environmental and social sustainability are at the top of policy agendas.

Based on analysis of literature around collaborative approaches to CSV for mitigating transaction costs, the authors define the contours of a new conceptual framework for the roles that CMOs can play in fostering collective CSV. The authors illustrate how the different components of the framework are reflected in emerging cluster practice in the context of a new wave of European cluster-based projects tackling CSV elements.

The resulting framework reconciles the concepts of clusters and CSV by explicitly positioning CMOs as intermediaries for facilitating the CSV strategies of their members. CMOs embrace emergent strategy making that targets (tangible and intangible) collective CSV capabilities and addresses collective CSV challenges. Collective CSV can provide a theoretical anchor guiding future cluster policies to fully leverage the transformative potential of CMOs. This conceptual framework opens a promising empirical research agenda, particularly around evaluating the plurality of impacts of CMOs.

By stressing the social impact of CMOs alongside their well-understood economic impacts, and by enabling a categorization of functions that can support the monitoring of CMO activities toward collective CSV strategies, the framework provides a novel basis for inspiring further empirical research into the evidencing of these roles.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the link between collaborative governance arrangements for place-based competitiveness and public innovation.

The paper combines a conceptual discussion of the links between collaborative governance, competitiveness policy and public innovation with a case study analysis of a specific governance process that aims at adapting policy to respond to local competitiveness challenges in the Basque province of Biscay.

The conceptual discussion leads to the hypothesis of a new distinction with respect to how governance relates to public innovation. Innovation can occur in governance, through governance or with governance. The analysis of the case supports this distinction. Multi-actor collaboration for competitiveness policymaking (innovation in governance) has led to policy innovation (innovation through governance). This has also promoted emerging administrative changes that could be conducive to a more innovative public sector in general (innovation with governance). These findings validate arguments posed by proponents of collaborative innovation that suggest that multi-actor collaboration is a driver for public sector innovation.

The value of the paper rests on linking theoretically and empirically two relevant and currently popular phenomena: networked governance for place-based competitiveness policymaking and public sector innovation. The paper provides original insights from the practice of building a process for context-sensitive policymaking that can inspire practitioners with similar problems.

This paper aims to theorise and test a causal model of predominantly lean-driven quality improvement (QI) in the context of health-care clinical microsystems, examining the effects contextual factors in this setting have on improvement activity.

QI practitioners at a New Zealand District Health Board were surveyed on a range of contextual factors hypothesised to influence improvement outcomes. Survey responses were analysed via partial least squares path modelling to test the causal model that was designed to be consistent with the “model for understanding success in quality” (MUSIQ) model (Kaplan et al., 2012) adopted in health-care QI.

Defined variables for teamwork, respect for people, lean actions and negative motivating factors all demonstrated significant effects. These findings support the representation of the microsystem layer within the MUSIQ model. The final model predicted and explained perceived success well (adjusted R² = 0.58).

The sample was a non-probability sample and the sample size was small (n = 105), although power analysis indicated that we exceeded the minimum sample size (97 cases). Even though health-care processes have universality, this study was conducted in only one district in New Zealand.

The results support highly functional teamwork as the critical contextual factor in health-care QI outcomes and suggest lean-driven process improvement can be a valid mediating mechanism. The key recommendation for practitioners is to increase focus on human resource capability when initiating and supporting QI.

The originality is testing the robustness of the MUSIQ model specifically in a lean environment, which provides the context for QI. The paper provides a more detailed specification of contextual factors acting as exogenous variables that moderate the cause (lean actions) and the effect (perceived success).

Means, medians and SD for available socio‐economic status (SES) black‐white differences are here substituted for those of IQ in a between‐groups model published by the author over a decade ago. The goodness of fit of the SES variables used is compared with that for the earlier IQ data. Even when SES variables are relatively successful this can be viewed as additional evidence of the importance of IQ differences to black‐white differences in delinquency.

Customers are important stakeholders for any company; yet, they seem not to be widely discussed in merger and acquisition research. This chapter synthesizes the current body of research on customers in mergers and acquisitions through presenting a systematic literature review. The chapter is based on a systematic literature review resulting from a search in EBSCO Host for any research item that refers to “customer” and “consolidation or merger of corporation.” All articles were coded to specify how customers are described, with a focus on whether customers are expected to affect and/or be affected by the merger or acquisition. Articles were compared with regard to their year of issue and research disciplines of publishing journals. The review indicates how customers continue to be discussed only to limited extent. The customer roles array from them as an acquirable customer base to customers as actors, whose activities become the very reason to merge or acquire. Literature also refers to them as victims and affected by the merger or acquisition, and reacting parties. In addition to the description of welfare transfer from consumers to acquirers in law and economics studies, the different ways of referring to customers extend beyond specific research disciplines. The literature review indicates more multifaceted ways of describing customers in recent research. No systematic literature review on customers in merger and acquisition literature has previously been conducted. The comparison of research disciplines, years of issue, and customer roles provides new insights into developments in the merger and acquisition field of research.