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The present study sought to determine whether or not there is an association between contextual effects of violent socialization on violent youth behavior across different nations.

The data in this study derive from the International Dating Violence Study, a dataset of over 17,000 college students collected in 32 different nations. Variables consist of various scales from the Personal Relationship Profile that focuses on experiences and behaviors occurring prior to age 15 years, as well as national indicators of violence. Multilevel modeling analysis was used to analyze the data.

The results indicate two important findings. First, violent socialization significantly varies across different national contexts and this contextual effect accounts for a significant proportion of variation in youth violence. Second, violent socialization, both within individual families and as a contextual effect within different nations, is significantly associated with increases in violent youth behavior across the nations.

The International Dating Violence Study is a cross-sectional convenience sample of college students, which is not representative of specific nations nor college students. Further, the present study classifies nations as a “community” rather than explore microlevel communities within a nation. Future research should focus on examining variation of area specific norms for subsets of communities within nations with representative samples of a general population.

The present study appears to be one of the first published studies offering empirical evidence for international research on the theoretical argument of the contextual effects of violence within a nation, and begins to increase knowledge among criminologists of such contextual factors being associated with youth violent behavior across different nations.

Editorial This special issue of Industrial Management & Data Systems is a huge departure from our usual journal/ monograph style. This is an additional issue to the year's volume — a bonus in fact.

Discusses how most organizations use formal methods which are purely objective and rational to evaluate system projects. Such methods are incapable of capturing the social aspects of system projects and as such are not appropriate. Inappropriate evaluation mechanisms and criteria have caused the detrimental effects of organizational bias to flourish, thereby defeating the purposes of project evaluation. Organizations, either knowingly or unknowingly, are judging instead of evaluating projects with the intention to punish or reward the project teams and so encourage biasing effects. Contends that an effective project evaluation should adopt a socio‐technical approach to reflect the socio‐technical nature of information systems. Describes and illustrates managerial guidelines on socio‐technical approach to project evaluation capable of accounting and controlling for the obvious effects of organizational bias.

Total quality management programmes emphasizing continuous improvement have become increasingly popular as companies perceive the importance of quality in maintaining or enhancing their competitive position. Although improvement programmes are extremely valuable, they do not eliminate the need for control. Unfortunately, companies striving for quality improvement may de‐emphasize, or even abandon, the use of process control charts, believing that process control cannot be applied during periods of change. There is a need for a procedure formally linking the methodology of statistical process control – which assumes process stability – to the management of quality improvement programmes – which assumes constant positive change. Provides a procedure to develop and use process goal charts. The procedure uses a straightforward adaptation of the standard process control chart methodology to support and control the planned change of a continuous improvement programme. The procedure is illustrated with a simple example and possible extensions of the procedure are suggested.

Quality is an important issue for software development. Total quality management (TQM) has been suggested as a solution to software quality problems. The key elements of TQM as it has evolved over the last ten years are identified and examined in relation to software development. Discusses some of the adaptations to TQM needed to address the specific nature of software quality. Concludes that TQM can provide a framework to integrate many of the current approaches to software quality, resulting in technically correct systems which solve customers′ business problems.

Manufacturers and engineers need a practical and operational way to understand sustainable manufacturing and to apply it to their shop floors. The single index enables manufacturing industries to make decisions considering the continuous improvement to increase sustainability performance. The purpose of this paper is to develop a manufacturing sustainability index (MSI) based on lean and sustainability concepts using sustainable-value stream mapping.

The methodology of this research is linked to Delphi- analytical hierarchy process (AHP) qualitative assessment with sustainable-value stream mapping quantitative analysis for determining MSI. The Delphi method is used with relevant indicator selection, sustainable-value stream mapping is used to score the relevant indicator with efficiency approach and the AHP method is used to determine the indicator weight. To evaluate the applicability of this framework for assessing sustainability in the manufacturing process, a case study in Indonesian Wooden Furniture was developed.

The findings of this research is the framework for evaluating and assessing the sustainability performance of the manufacturing process. Although evaluation of the framework is limited to the furniture industry, there is a methodology potential to reproduce for the other sectors.

Theoretically, this study has provided a single index to measure performance of the manufacturing sustainability comprehensively at factory level. However, the implementation of the developed model is too limited. More application in different sectors and different industrial sizes is needed.

The value of this research lies in the novelty of the single index in measuring manufacturing sustainability and the relevant indicators for the furniture industry in Indonesia. The selection of the indicators has involved practitioners in the furniture industry and encompassed economic, environmental and social dimensions. The visualization of indicators through sustainable-value stream mapping is proven to be more practical and helpful for industrialists.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationships between organizational culture, the adoption and extent of use of quality management (QM) programs, as well as extent of use of traditional information systems (TIS), e‐commerce (E‐C) and customer relationship management (CRM) systems in Jamaica.

A sample of 93 Jamaican managers are surveyed from a variety of companies including small businesses, as well as Jamaican‐based operations units of US companies.

Our results from this exploratory study offer support for several of the relationships we have suggested. There are strong relationships, across organizations, between QM maturity – in terms of traditional QM only – and all three types of information systems (IS)‐CRM effectiveness, IS: traditional effectiveness and extensiveness, and E‐C extensiveness and effectiveness. In terms of relationships to culture, also notable are the unexpected results found in the negative relationship between the Person‐centered culture and E‐C and TIS use.

This research suggests an intriguing series of relationships between IS and QM maturity and, we believe, indicates that further study could lead to an understanding of the impacts which could be helpful to managers seeking competitiveness and researchers hoping to learn more about organizations and quality.

Both quality management and the use of information technology have been widely researched over recent years. However, there has been no well‐founded empirical research on the two together – on how IT can support quality management practices. This paper presents a research instrument to be used in such research. In order to measure the extent to which IT supports QM, the construct “quality management, supported by information technology” was operationalised. Data from 110 public organisations that have applied for the Malaysian Prime Minister’s Quality Award (Public Sector) were gathered in a field survey to enable a rigorous examination of the construct operationalised. Analysis of literature suggested eight dimensions of quality management, namely leadership, output quality assurance, strategic planning process, human resource utilisation, important innovations, information and analysis, customer satisfaction, and quality results. The research findings supported this and suggested a ninth dimension, supplier quality assurance. The empirical work indicated that “quality management supported by information technology” construct demonstrate the key psychometric properties including reliability, construct validity, and predictive validity.

In an intensely competitive global marketplace reshaped by the opening of new markets, the study of international operations strategy (IOS) is becoming increasingly important. This paper undertakes a comprehensive review of the IOS literature from 31 well‐regarded operations management and broad management journals over a 12‐year period from 1986 through 1997. It presents the findings and issues addressed in the research. It explores the trend in IOS publications and presents a breakdown of this literature based on its country‐ and region‐specific focus. It examines the mix of authorship of IOS research, the methodologies employed, and discusses future directions for IOS research.

Two key questions in flexible manufacturing systems design are “Why and where is flexibility needed?” and “What type of flexibility is needed?” We present an auditing tool to support managers in their efforts to answer these questions. The objective of this audit is to estimate the needed flexibility by linking it to the uncertainty experienced in the company’s manufacturing operations. The premise of this approach is that the need for flexibility is triggered by some recurring operational change in the company’s environment. Introduces two distinct classes of flexibility‐related changes on the basis of their source: external and internal. The flexibility audit consists of a structured questionnaire that is designed to identify and prioritize the changes being experienced by the facility. Subsequently prioritizes and links the changes to different flexibility types. Reports the results of the audit in three easy to read tables. Expects the audit to be the first step in any flexible manufacturing design (FMD) effort. Presents a case study.