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Article
Publication date: 3 February 2012

Markku Kuula, Antero Putkiranta and Jarmo Toivanen

The purpose of this paper is to study how, in recent decades, manufacturing sites have reacted to changes in their business environment by developing their management practices…

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Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to study how, in recent decades, manufacturing sites have reacted to changes in their business environment by developing their management practices. This also makes it possible to predict the behavior and lifecycles of the new practices adopted by companies.

Design/methodology/approach

The study is longitudinal, conducted in 1993, 2004 and 2010. It used a standard questionnaire, based on the “Made in Europe” benchmarking study. The results were analysed by Friedman's rank order method. The use of a three (or more) data‐point longitudinal study is the clearest way to reveal changes in, and the behaviour of, the practices.

Findings

The data suggest that there is a lifecycle for the practices used in companies and that many of the practices adopted in the late 1990s are already out of date. However, personnel‐related practices seem to last longer than process‐related practices. Furthermore, these practices seem to follow the curve of the Bass diffusion model.

Research limitations/implications

The results are restricted to the sample which is quite small in size, but gives a good insight into the changes occurring within it. This research excludes new practices adopted in recent years, and uses only the questions designed for the first year in which the study was conducted. However, its purpose is to show the evolution of some practices in the form of a unique, longitudinal study. The study also indicates the lifecycles of the practices included in the sample.

Originality/value

This study is the only longitudinal study in its field to use data from three different time periods. It can thus look into and analyze change from a unique perspective.

Details

International Journal of Operations & Production Management, vol. 32 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0144-3577

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Article
Publication date: 29 April 2014

Markku Kuula, Antero Putkiranta and Jarmo Toivanen

– The purpose of this paper is to analyze changes in the supply chain and production process, and the effects these changes have had on competitive performance.

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Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to analyze changes in the supply chain and production process, and the effects these changes have had on competitive performance.

Design/methodology/approach

The study is longitudinal and was conducted in 1993, 2004 and 2010 with a standard questionnaire. The data have been analyzed by using the Mann-Whitney U-test.

Findings

The study indicates that changing a role within the supply chain may help a company to adapt to surrounding changes, but there is no single best way to react to such changes. Companies must be able to position themselves in the new situation.

Research limitations/implications

Even though the study itself and the data are unique, there are still some limitations. Although the results are limited to the sample, they nevertheless give a good insight into the changes that occurred within the sample.

Originality/value

This study is the only longitudinal study in this field to compare three periods of time. This gives a unique perspective to study the changes that have occurred during the last 15 years.

Details

Benchmarking: An International Journal, vol. 21 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1463-5771

Keywords

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Article
Publication date: 4 July 2016

Ville Hallavo, Jarmo Toivanen, Markku Kuula and Antero Putkiranta

Ownership change has been an overlooked contingency factor in past plant level practice-performance studies. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of…

387

Abstract

Purpose

Ownership change has been an overlooked contingency factor in past plant level practice-performance studies. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of ownership changes to practice-performance dynamics by longitudinally following the same 23 manufacturing sites from year 1993 to 2010.

Design/methodology/approach

Interview data of the made in Finland – study are used for presenting different paths of plant development in the long term. Both narratives and descriptive statistics are used to support the analysis.

Findings

The findings suggest that the benefits of long-term domestic ownership may in fact exceed the positive knowledge spill-over effects that derive from foreign acquisitions. Foreign acquirers seem to “cherry-pick” well-performing sites. Also it seems that the likelihood of inferior performance and plant shutdowns may increase due to foreign acquisitions.

Research limitations/implications

Due to the exploratory nature of the study the sample size did not allow for testing statistical significance of the results.

Originality/value

The exploratory findings of the study open new avenues of theory development for practice-performance studies, and corroborate research in other disciplines such as economics and corporate governance.

Details

Benchmarking: An International Journal, vol. 23 no. 5
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1463-5771

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