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Since the late 1980s, the concepts of organizational learning (OL) and learning organization (LO) has prospered and been advocated as an effective strategy for organizational excellence. However, there was a lack of systematic documentation or cases reported proving the sustaining effect of OL. The purpose of this paper is to present a successful 15-year OL case in China, with which to prove PAL is a sustainable vehicle for OL.

This study documents a 15-year successful journey of a project-based action learning (PAL) driven OL setting in a multinational high-tech manufacturing company in China. The case study has been focusing on the progress of the four pillars in the PAL framework (i.e. policy and strategy; learning facilitation; resources and technology; and performance management) throughout the 15-year journey. Besides secondary data collection, on-site interviews with participants and the management of the company were carried out.

From this longitudinal case study, it can be seen that the four pillars form a very robust infrastructure supporting PAL for driving OL within the company. Each pillar is indispensable and evolves according to the needs of the others. Both management and learning team members perceived that PAL is an effective tool to drive OL within the case company.

This paper presents a unique15-year longitudinal examination of a successful OL story in a high-tech company in China, through the adoption of the PAL driven framework and the evolutionary road of the associated parts. While successful, this paper is considered as a “stage” summary of the long range road of OL adoption, with PAL proven to be a sustainable OL vehicle.

Mission statements are perceived as effective strategic tools and foundations of an organization's objectives, driving the development of strategic plans to meet the established goals. A vast number of studies have investigated mission statements in industry; however, little is known on how mission statements affect institutes in the higher education sector. Every university is intrinsically different, with its own mission and goals. This study aims to explore how mission statements make the difference among universities, by understanding the values delivered by the mission statements.

This study attempts to understand the core values of universities through a content analysis of the mission statements of the top 250 universities worldwide.

The results show four core dimensions in university mission statements, namely, “Education Philosophies”, “Strategic Orientation”, “Social Responsibility” and “Values to Stakeholders”, while the most common core values are “Research”, “Educate” and “Student”.

Mission statements offer insightful venues for the analysis of the strategic directions of universities. The results show that top universities present their core values through their mission statements. Some mission statements are more service-oriented (towards students) and some are more social-oriented (towards society and stakeholders). These mission statements are communicated to various stakeholders. “Education philosophies” are communicated to educators and students, “Social responsibility” is to the society, “Values to the stakeholders” are towards the different parties involved in the education system and the last one “Strategic orientation” is for the strategy setting.

This paper proposes a new methodology of mission statement studies, covering not only studies on mission statements but also the internationalization strategies of universities, which attract attention from academics and education researchers.

The drug logistics play a crucial role in the hospital service performance. It has been proved that modern logistics concept is a valid access to competitiveness. In order to enhance the comprehensive capability and core competence of hospitals, including the internal support system, there is a great need to have an in-depth and systematic study on the drug logistics system in hospitals. The purpose of this paper is to explore the current situation of the drug logistics and the drug centres operations in public hospitals in China; specifically how the organizational partnerships with the supply chain partners can affect the operational performance.

In this study, the possibility of correlations between schedule instability, partnerships with supply chain partners, and internal drug logistics operation is investigated by modelling, with reference to the previous work of Law et al. (2009), in which collective efficacy of the performance is incorporated into the model.

The findings of this study show that the drug logistics working teams in public hospitals in China have a high level of efficacy and self-confidence, while they perceive they provide good operations even at a low level of schedule nervousness. The study also reinforces the significant correlation between internal operation and partnership with customers. This is definitely useful for the development of an appropriate framework for drug logistics operation improvement in the long run.

The study thus offers a good reference for the administrators and practitioners who are keen on improving the service operations in the healthcare sector in the region.

The paper aims to describe the development and introduction of the project action learning (PAL) framework as the OL vehicle in a company's move towards a learning organization.

This is a longitudinal case study of this company‐based LO and OL project. The paper describes the development and implementation experiences of PAL within the company, located in the Pearl River Delta of Southern China.

This paper describes the first four rounds of the PAL implementation within the case company. This is a work in progress. To date a very successful start to PAL implementation has been reported.

After a successful start of the PAL implementation, the authors and the sponsoring company anticipate a continued propagation of PAL activities as the main OL vechicles of the company.

This is a useful case reference for LO and OL development and implementation in industrial organization particularly for manufacturing enterprises in Southern China.

Organizational learning (OL) has been considered to be an effective developmental initiative in organizations that have a mission to develop, to sustain and to advance. There is a wide range of beliefs of thinking about what organizational learning is, how it occurs, and how it is applied and how it influences organizational development. Different perspectives are used to study OL by researchers from different disciplines. There is no clear and widely accepted depiction of the linkage between OL and its enabling factors. Such a comprehensive concept covering many aspects, such as organization science, organizational knowledge and learning, is difficult to achieve. The purpose of this paper is to determine the applicability of a conceptual model to describe OL as a continuous process.

This paper proposes a conceptual approach describing OL as a continuous process. Selected literature on various OL theories is reviewed.

The model not only describes OL as a continuous goal‐driven process, but also allows the understanding of the relationships with various influencing factors and facilitating the effectiveness of an OL framework.

The authors introduce a variant of a classic approach to analyze the OL process by describing OL as a continuous process. A model for successful OL by placing emphasis on the facilitative learning framework (FIF) is proposed.

Concept of “organisational learning” has been widely advocated as one of the solutions for organisational development, especially for those companies requiring high level of technology and knowledge. While being applied to the entire organisation, the concept of organisational learning can also be applied to specific function or project teams, which can be named as “project” based organisations. This paper presents a new approach of learning for the project‐based teams, which integrates learning and project in one, towards organisational learning ideals. Performance evaluation mechanism is also developed. With the developed evaluation, three dimensions of team performance, within the scope of project action‐learning framework would be measured. It would tell the team where it stands at a particular point of time. In order to track the critical variables required to reach the goals, the developed measurement system framework will be adopted in the implementation phase.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a decision support system (DSS) to enhance the performance of cross‐border supply chain, the goal of which is to improve order planning and fulfill customer orders within the warehouse.

An intelligent DSS, namely order picking planning system (OPPS) with the adoption of case‐based reasoning, is proposed to support managers in making appropriate order fulfilling decisions when an order involves cross‐border activities. Similar cases in the past are retrieved and adapted in reference to the new order. A case study is then conducted to illustrate the feasibility and effectiveness of the system.

Recommendations are given to replace the objective decision‐making process in cross‐border supply chain with the help of the DSS. The warehouse order planning time has been reduced and useful information from past order records can be applied to solve new problems.

With the increasing demand for material sourcing across different places, cross‐border supply chain has raised the concern for manufacturers to seek lower material and rental costs. The focus on warehouse operations can increase efficiency in order delivery by considering cross‐border requirements.

The positioning of the customer order decoupling point (CODP) is an important strategic consideration for supply chains. Recently, research has focused only on the static effects of CODP positioning. The purpose of this paper is to expand the body of knowledge by describing the dynamic consequences that arise from shifting the CODP upstream or downstream.

A generic assembly‐to‐order system dynamics simulation model is developed and used to evaluate the dynamic consequences of shifting the CODP.

Placing the CODP downstream allows for short‐term fluctuations in demand to be absorbed by the order book, leading to a stable production rate and inventory response. This benefit must, however, be weighed against any additional safety stock a CODP placed far downstream may require.

The paper demonstrates the importance of considering the dynamic aspects of CODP positioning. Further research should investigate the phenomenon for different demand scenarios and supply chain configurations.

Downstream shifting of the CODP has been identified as a powerful way to reduce variability in assembly‐to‐order systems.

This paper introduces the dynamic consequences of CODP location, providing a new perspective that should be considered when positioning the CODP.

In the ever‐changing world, vendor selection and evaluation are very important in supply chain management. Recently, there has been extensive research in the areas of vendor selection and evaluation under certainty/uncertainty without time axis, but there has been very little research in the selection of vendor with time axis. The purpose of this paper is to address this gap in the research.

Traditional approaches have been neglecting multi‐period planning horizon for vendor selection, and many decision makers or experts select vendors based on their practice and intuition. To overcome these problems, a dynamic model supporting vendors with time axis has been developed which is not always crisp, rather it involves a high degree of fuzziness and uncertainty. The authors use fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (AHP) to propose the decision model.

The research provides a mathematical system that captures the uncertainties associated with human cognitive processes in order to select the vendor. The findings of this study provide meaningful and advanced knowledge to decision makers by demonstrating a simple, efficient method to enhance the ability to predict an appropriate vendor period wise.

This research provides detailed step‐by‐step procedures to choose the best vendor selection and evaluation under uncertainty with time axis in a supply chain. It will be of value to other researchers and the department members in any firm who are responsible for selecting the vendor.