Environmental technical and administrative innovations in the Canadian manufacturing industry

This paper explores whether the adoption of an EMS and/or TQM, both administrative innovations, lead to the development of cleaner technological innovations. We draw on the stakeholder influence literature and Daft's (1978) dual core model of organizational innovation to determine the factors affecting a facility's decision to undertake cleaner technological innovations. Using Canadian facility level manufacturing data, we find that an EMS reduces the likelihood that a facility will implement environmental technologies that change the production process (clean technologies) while TQM increases the likelihood that the facility will implement clean technologies. We also find that administrative pressures (corporate headquarters and shareholders/investors) have no impact on technological innovations while external stakeholders such as regulators, community groups and environmental groups as well as customers and suppliers each increase the likelihood that facilities will use cleaner technologies. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

Environmental considerations within manufacturing strategy: an international study

This paper examines the relative importance of environmental management in four key areas of manufacturing strategy: competitive priorities, action programmes, performance improvement and improvement goals. Its overall position in manufacturing strategy is measured through the creation of an original index using data from the 2001 International Manufacturing Strategy Survey (IMSS). Results show that in a minority of firms environmental management is positively positioned. The index's relationships with indicators of innovation and performance in manufacturing are examined. Some significant results include capabilities in the areas of strategy formalization, strategic fit and ISO14001 certification. While results are specific to the IMSS context, implications may be drawn for resource‐based view of the firm research on the application of resources and capabilities. An implication for policy makers is that the development of capabilities for strategy formalization and implementation should be incorporated into environmental policy. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

Career commitment in collectivist and individualist cultures: a comparative study

A comparative study of Malaysian and Australian managers used the Carson and Bedeian multidimensional career commitment measure and the individualism-collectivism scale developed by Singelis et al . (1995) in a survey to test the hypothesis that career commitment is likely to be higher in individualistic than in collectivistic cultures. Malaysian managers were more collectivistic but also more vertically individualistic than Australian managers, and the two groups differed only in their levels of career resilience commitment and were not significantly different in career identity and career planning commitment. These results may reflect a shift from collectivism towards individualism with Malaysia's economic development, but collectivism may also be adapting to economic development and social change and the findings add weight to recent criticism of accepted conceptualizations of cultures.     

Performance pay in Canadian and Australian firms: a comparative study

Based on data from 315 Canadian and Australian firms, this study examines the incidence of 13 specific forms of performance pay, along with factors that may affect their incidence. Overall, Canadian and Australian firms showed similar incidences of most forms of performance pay, with employee profit sharing the notable exception. Depending on the type and form of performance pay, various factors predicted the incidence of performance pay. As expected, firm size and unionization were among the most important predictors of individual and organizational performance pay, but neither factor predicted group performance pay. The results also indicated that high involvement firms in both Canada and Australia used more organizational performance pay than other firms, but not more group or individual performance pay. This study provides qualified support for convergence in international pay practices, but also highlights the continued importance of contextual and firm-level factors.     

Variations in strike activity within UK manufacturing industry

Stephen Creigh and Peter Makeham seek to explain inter-industry variations in both stoppage frequency and stoppage incidence at a highly disaggregated level. They develop and then test a simple model which relates strike activity to the conditions under which bargaining takes place and to bargaining structures.     

Environmental reporting within the forest and paper industry

Research on environmental reporting within individual sectors and industries is limited. Generic studies have typically focused on the reporting practices of the world's largest corporates. Some industries and sectors are under‐represented within these studies, limiting the potential for industry‐ or sector‐specific analysis. Forest and paper is one industry frequently under‐represented. This study examines environmental reporting amongst the top 100 forest and paper companies. The scale of environmental report publication is investigated, and the breadth and depth of reporting on the key industry issues of forest management and fibre procurement examined. The results show reporting is more prevalent amongst larger corporates but marked regional variations are evident. Most noticeably, Scandinavian companies are reporting more extensively, both in terms of the number of levels at which they report and the depth of information included on forest management and fibre procurement. Reasons for the marked regional variations in reporting are considered and markets for forest products and preferences within those markets for specific certification schemes identified as potential influencing factors. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

Employee organizational commitment: the influence of cultural and organizational factors in the Australian manufacturing industry

The importance of enhancing employee organizational commitment (EOC) is highlighted by the extensive literature revealing its positive impact on employees' job performance, reducing absenteeism and turnover rates, and improving employees' adaptability to organizational change. This study provides an insight into how EOC levels can be enhanced by examining the contextual factors that can influence EOC. Specifically, the study examines the association between cultural, organizational, and demographic factors with the level of EOC in the Australian manufacturing industry. Data were collected by a survey questionnaire from a random sample of 500 managers with the results revealing that two cultural factors (outcome orientation and stability) and three organizational factors (organizational size, perceived organizational support and job satisfaction) were found to be significantly associated with the level of EOC. Further analysis provides a preliminary insight into how to enhance the EOC of specific managers with different cultural and organizational factors found to be associated with the EOC of managers at different levels in the organizational hierarchy. The findings have important implications for practitioners attempting to improve the level of EOC of their employees with the subsequent enhancements in the level of EOC likely to contribute to improvements in productivity and growth in the Australian manufacturing industry.     

Concentration,unionization and the distribution of income in Canadian manufacturing industry

An attempt is made to assess how the unionization of labor and the presence of buyers possessing monopsony power affects the distribution of income among the factors of production in Canadian manufacturing. It is found that these variables have a composite effect. They transfer income from factors of production in one industry to the factors in another. They also affect the distribution of income between labor and capital within industries.     

做空调业的"英特尔"--上海日立十年完成一个产业转移

今年7月12日,浦东金桥传出喜讯:上海日立电器有限公司(以下简称上海日立),今年以来空调压缩机销量已突破500万台,其中直接出口和配套出口机种占22％,新机种占75％! 喜孜孜的上海日立人说:这是1994年销量的18倍、1996年销量的5倍,相当于去年一年的总销量。这个     

我国制造业发展与应用电子商务研究

互联网和电子商务的出现,已经给各行各业带来了前所未有的冲击,制造业也不例外,可以说,它的 影响力不亚于第一次工业革命时蒸汽机给工业带来的影响。本文主要讨论电子化采购、数字化产品设计、数字化 生产、电子化供应链管理、网络营销、客户关系管理、电子化服务等电子商务的表现形式在制造业中的发展与应用, 并从政府和企业两个角度具体探讨了促进制造业电子商务发展的相关策略与措施。     

Import-led technological capability: a comparative analysis of Indian and Indonesian manufacturing firms

This research investigates the critical elements that affect the ability of firms in developing countries to cultivate their technological capability through imported technology. Based on resource-based theory, we propose both internal and external factors contribute to technological capability of the recipient firms. Technology planning and control, market orientation, training and number of technical manpower were the internal factors considered in this study. Government support and national technology infrastructure are the external factors proposed to affect the technological capability of firm. Data collected from Indian and Indonesian manufacturing firms reveals that R&D investment, and availability of technical personnel; the transfer channels; government’s involvement; and the firm’s learning culture are significant contributors to the technology capability process. Also, the acquisition of mature technology just to boost production capacity or improve product quality contributes very little to the development of technological capability.     

Training and commitment in a German manufacturing company during the post-2008 crisis: a case of internal flexicurity

Studies on the links between training and organizational commitment have only looked at professional and managerial workers, mostly in the U.S. This paper focuses on a German manufacturing company that employed many blue-collar workers and offered generous training opportunities during short-time work in the post-2008 crisis. In an analysis based on employee survey data, only training in job-specific skills and training in skills usable outside of work were found to be associated positively with organizational commitment. The findings suggest that employer-provided training programs may be part of a model that achieves internal flexicurity in economies such as Germany.     

Circular business model implementation: A capability development case study from the manufacturing industry

Circular business models (CBMs) have huge potential to deliver economic, social, and environmental benefits, but CBMs have yet to be implemented widely in industrial settings. One reason is that they are often presented as one-size-fits-all solutions, but this is misplaced because product-specific criteria and company capabilities determine the correct choice and implementation of CBMs. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to investigate how CBM selection and capability development facilitates the implementation of CBMs. For this purpose, we have adopted a qualitative research approach and undertaken 25 explorative interviews in three large Swedish manufacturing companies. In this paper, a CBM implementation framework consisting of two parts has been developed. The first part addresses the choice of the appropriate CBM based on tactical configurations. The second part provides a capability development path by explicating underlying routines that need to be progressively developed in order to move smoothly to more advanced CBMs.     

Unions and restructuring in the Mexican automobile industry: a comparative assessment

This article examines the variation in union responses to restructuring initiatives in the Mexican automobile industry. The research indicates that militant responses were more likely to occur in unions characterised by internal democracy and autonomy from Mexico's state-corporatist labour confederations.     

Economic freedom: a comparative study

This paper presents a comparative study of economic freedom in five groups of countries: Free, Mostly Free, Islamic, Latin American, and a subset of EU member countries. The study includes 103 countries, and uses data from the 2007 Index of Economic Freedom. The paper tests for the statistical significance of the difference between group means for each of ten measures of economic freedom and for the overall freedom score. The empirical evidence shows that the Islamic countries have significantly less economic freedom than the other groups, and that they are the only group with declining economic freedom in the last 13 years.

Allocation of resources within subgroups of an industry: a case study in the Chinese industrial sector

Journal of Productivity Analysis - Facing bottlenecks of economic growth, two important policy concerns of the Chinese government are the regional fragmentation and ownership distortion. This paper...     

Perceived training benefits and training bundles: a Canadian study

The purpose of this study is to examine the link between training and the perceived contribution of training to enhanced productivity or cost reduction. Using data from 92 Canadian organizations, the results show that organizations with higher percentage of trained employees are likely to perceive training to be beneficial. In addition, the results indicate that perceived benefits of training are further enhanced by the presence of human resources management practices that either encourages employees to undertake training (the motivation bundle) and/or provides a systematic assessment of post-training effectiveness (the assessment bundle). The evidence however also shows that open climate as measured by autonomous work systems nullifies the benefits of training, suggesting that under such a structure, employees are unlikely to put in practice the skills they acquired during training.     

The existence of a real value-added function in the Canadian manufacturing sector

Sims (1969), Gordon (1969), and Arrow (1972) have demonstrated that the capability of using real value-added to measure the output of a sector when material inputs are employed in the production process rests upon primary factor inputs being weakly separable from material inputs. In Canada, the double deflation technique is used by Statistics Canada to measure the real value-added output of an industry; this technique assumes strong separability. This paper tests both of these separability hypotheses for the Canadian manufacturing sector using data from 1950 to 1972 and a translogarithmic production function. Our tests lead us to reject both the strong and weak separability hypotheses. Furthermore, our estimates of the Allen partial elasticity of substitution of capital for labor are radically different from the results of previous Canadian studies.     

Affective commitment within the public sector: antecedents and performance outcomes between ownership types

How to generate affective commitment and realize its performance potential is deemed critical to public management. But in the context of service outsourcing, does ownership type influence its antecedents and performance outcomes? Drawing on postal survey data for English leisure providers, we find training is an antecedent across public and private ownership types; performance appraisal is an antecedent for private ownership only; while performance-related pay carries an insignificant effect. Affective commitment holds business and customer performance outcomes for public ownership, but insignificant effects are observed for external ownership types. Implications of this contextual variation for public management theory are discussed.