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The purpose of this paper is to provide a critical analysis of studies on strategic consensus along manufacturing competitive priorities. Based on this analysis, a new methodology to measure strategic consensus on manufacturing competitive priorities that is more consistent with mainstream operations management theory is proposed. The paper also includes novel proposals for future research.

The new methodology and proposals for research are mainly based on a literature review of previous studies on strategic consensus regarding manufacturing competitive priorities and also on relevant research and works in the field of operations management.

Previous methodologies used to measure strategic consensus regarding manufacturing competitive priorities are mainly based on studies in the business strategy field. Thus, these methodologies are deemed as inadequate in the operations management field. It is also found that there are very few studies that have analysed this topic in the operations management field. Moreover, since the methodologies used in those studies are based on previous research in the field of business strategy, the results of the reviewed papers are considered as questionable.

For academics, the paper and its results imply a change in the methodologies and research used to study the issue of strategic consensus on manufacturing competitive priorities. The lack of research into this topic is also observed. More research and studies on this theme are needed. For practitioners, the methodology proposed in the paper could be utilised in order to assess the employees' knowledge of the relationships between manufacturing capabilities inside manufacturing firms.

To the best of the author's knowledge, this is the first review paper into this under‐researched theme in the operations management field. The paper also presents the first methodology that incorporates mainstream theory and research in the field of operations management into the measurement of strategic consensus on manufacturing competitive priorities.

To provide a selective bibliography on reported empirical evidence regarding the compatibility/trade‐offs relationships between delivery reliability and other manufacturing capabilities, and also identify specific areas for future research.

The paper conceptually examines published studies which have reported a trade‐off/compatibility situation between delivery reliability and other manufacturing capabilities such as internal quality, external quality, manufacturing costs, inventory costs, etc. Some different aspects of delivery reliability are also discussed.

Principally, the paper identifies a need to study in more detail the different variables (manufacturing capabilities, contextual variables and manufacturing practices) that could be potentially associated with the achievement of high manufacturing efficiency (high levels of outputs/low levels of inputs) in terms of delivery reliability, materials inventory and safety resources.

The literature review in the paper is intended to be exhaustive. Nevertheless, it is probable that scientific papers that report related/relevant material are involuntarily omitted.

By means of a detailed review of the literature, the paper identifies specific themes for future research. The paper also should be of help to practitioners as it gathers the empirical evidence regarding the compatibility/trade‐off situation between delivery reliability and other areas of manufacturing.

Some papers have dealt with literature reviews on manufacturing strategy as a whole. Nevertheless, to the best of our knowledge, this is the first paper that offers a literature review on delivery reliability. This paper also suggests a novel model of manufacturing efficiency and also proposes a methodology (data envelopment analysis) with which this approach can be examined in more detail.

A comprehensive analysis of a flexible hybrid assembly system (FHAS) where automated devices and human operators interact is presented. A computer simulation programme and ANOVA were conducted to identify which factors significantly affect the measures of performance of the system. The results clearly indicated that certain factors have a more significant effect on the measures of performance than the others. A classification of the relative significance of input factors affecting such a system is made. In order to investigate the generality of the results, alternative station configurations and factor levels are examined. The outcome shows that the results are applicable to different configurations of FHAS.

The purpose of this study is twofold: first to demonstrate the application of an algorithm using contextual data to ascertain consumer personality traits; and second to explore the factors impacting the relationship between personality traits and advertisement persuasiveness.

A mixed-method approach that comprises two distinct yet complementary studies. The first uses quantitative methods and is based on a sample of 35,264 retail banking customers. Study 2 explores the findings that emerge from Study 1 using qualitative methods.

This paper finds that matching consumer personality with congruent advertising messages can lead to more effective consumer persuasion for most personality types. For consumers who exhibit neurotic personality traits, ameliorating perceived risks during purchasing and providing cues for social acceptance and goal attainment are important factors for advertising effectiveness. These factors also had a positive impact on the purchasing behaviour of extroverted consumers.

This research focusses on understanding purchasing behaviour based on the most dominant personality trait. However, people are likely to exhibit a combination of most or even all of the Big Five personality traits.

Building on advances in natural language processing, enabling the identification of personality from language, this study demonstrates the possibility of influencing consumer behaviour by matching machine inferred personality to congruent persuasive advertising. It is one of the few studies to use contextual instead of social media data to capture individual personality. Such data serves to capture an authentic rather than contrived persona. Further, the study identifies the factors that may moderate this relationship and thereby provides an explanation of why some personality traits exhibit differences in purchasing behaviour from those that are anticipated by existing theory.

Although the idea that people are more likely to be responsive to advertising messages that are congruent with their personality type has already been successfully applied by advertising practitioners and documented by advertising scholars, this study extends existing research by identifying the factors that may moderate this relationship and thereby provides an explanation why some personality traits may exhibit differences in purchasing behaviour from those that are anticipated by existing theory.

Using the job demands-resources (JD-R) model as a theoretical foundation, this study aims to explore the potential of organizational leisure benefit programs in the interplay of job demands and perceived work-life balance.

This article is based on qualitative data collected from semi-structured interviews with 24 hospitality industry employees in Austria.

Thematic analysis revealed that organizational leisure benefits can play different roles in the context of job demands depending on the individual’s perceptions of work-life balance. Three major themes were identified, showing that organizational leisure benefits can be a multifaceted organizational resource (1) to facilitate employees’ leisure participation, (2) to boost employees’ recovery or (3) to meet the employees’ need for workplace fun. The results also demonstrated the limitations of organizational leisure benefits, showing that in case employees are constantly experiencing private duties that interfere with recovery during leisure time, leisure benefits do not play any role regarding their perception of work-life balance.

This study contributes to the scare literature on organizational leisure benefits and clarifies their potential, and limitations, as an emerging organizational resource. In particular, findings broaden existing research in the context of the JD-R model by showing that the notion of job resources can stretch beyond workplace resources and can also encompass organizational leisure support.

This study aims to examine the relationship between cultural distances between countries and their scores in the Corruption Perception Index (CPI), which is the most commonly used measure of corruption in international business (IB) research.

The authors applied fixed-effect (generalized least squares) statistical modeling technique to analyze 1,580 year-country observations.

The authors found that the CPI score is determined to a large extent by cultural distances between countries, specifically the distance to the USA and to Denmark.

CPI is often used as a sole measure of state-level corruption in IB research. The results show that the measure is significantly influenced by cultural differences and hence it should be applied with great caution, preferably augmented with other measures.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to look at cultural distances as determinants of CPI score. The authors empirically test whether the CPI is culturally biased.

To extend the limited yet conflicting results of prior studies, this paper hypothesizes and statistically tests alternative, structurally different models of likely positive impacts of activity-based costing (ABC) on organizational performance (OP). It also tests moderating effects of business type and business size.

To test the models' abilities to explain the data, this comparative study uses survey data from 191 Thai firms, measures validated in the study and structural equation modeling (SEM).

Extensive use of ABC for cost analysis, cost strategy and cost evaluation directly improves operational performance (OPP); it also indirectly improves financial performance (FP) through improving OPP. The results are similar for manufacturing and non-manufacturing firms and for large firms and small-medium enterprises (SMEs).

Future studies could test the alternative models in other geographical and industrial contexts and could widen the range of control variables.

Monitoring of the effects of ABC use on OPP is crucial to achieving positive financial outcomes. The cross-functional nature of ABC is apparent; for it to be effective managers must ensure cooperation from departments and employees involved in the design and implementation of ABC systems.

This research arbitrates prior inconsistent findings by adopting an original approach of testing structurally different models in a single comparative study, using measures validated in the study. It provides new evidence that extends knowledge about impacts of ABC on OP. Further, it demonstrates its applicability in the context of developing economies.

This article reports on a visit by a small group of SME managers from Barnsley and Doncaster in the UK to the USA. The aim of the project, entitled Networking USA, was to learn from US managers’ experiences of recovery and regeneration. Details of the preparation for the visit and the overall objectives are given, as well as a description of the main activities. Apart from business benefits which were recorded in the evaluation, the main benefit has been the construction of a learning network among the managers with continued links to US companies. The paper concludes with some issues and implications for SME management development research and policy.