Manufacturing strategy: Its assessment and practice

In recent years, the subject of manufacturing strategy has attracted much attention, yet it is still a relatively unresearched area. Among practitioners, unlike the term “marketing strategy,” the term “manufacturing strategy” does not have instant recognition as to its meaning, purpose, and utility.For continued progress in the research and practice of manufacturing strategy, there is a real need for practical methods of assessing the manufacturing strategy of businesses. For example, for practitioners, the assessment of manufacturing strategy is essential to the development, fine tuning, revision, and evaluation of manufacturing strategy.This study presents a method of assessing the manufacturing strategy of businesses. In the process of assessing the manufacturing strategy in thirty-five manufacturing firms, this study found several problems with the practice of manufacturing strategy and recommends some solutions.It has been reported by researchers that the task of assessing manufacturing strategy is often hampered by a lack of understanding of the term manufacturing strategy and the absence of explicitly denned manufacturing strategies within most manufacturing firms. Consequently, this study assessed the implied manufacturing strategy in the participating firms using the responses of both chief executives or equivalents and manufacturing managers. To overcome nonuniform understanding of the term among executives, multiple respondents and multiple methods using several direct and indirect questions were employed to get as good a fix on the manufacturing strategies of the firms as possible.It was found that while chief executives stressed quality, technology, etc., which would contribute to a business level strategy based on product differentiation, manufacturing managers stressed cost, and the keeping of delivery promises. This mismatch of emphasis between the two executives could be a sign of problems in the effective use of the manufacturing function.A major conclusion of this study is that executives in manufacturing firms are not sufficiently “literate” in matters concerning manufacturing strategy. However, this deficiency could be easily corrected by appropriate training in assessing, formulating, and implementing manufacturing strategy.The method used in this study for assessing manufacturing strategy could be used by chief executives and manufacturing managers to identify their implied manufacturing strategy, and to detect agreements as well as disagreements between the two. Further, the method used here could be replicated by executives in developing or reviewing the formal manufacturing strategies of their businesses.     

The Influence of Board Monitoring,Executive Incentives,and Corporate Strategy on Employment Stability

This study examines the effects of corporate governance and diversification strategy on organizational employment stability. Calls for reform in the governance of public corporations have led to the adoption of practices that render senior executives more accountable to shareholders. However, the extant corporate governance literature suggests that mechanisms which make managers more accountable to shareholders might introduce a short-term bias to top managers’ decision-making. Arguing that employment stability reflects a long-term decision-making orientation, results of this study show that firms with boards comprised of a greater proportion of independent, or “outside,” directors have lower levels of aggregate employment stability. In contrast, findings indicate that more diversified firms tend to have higher levels of aggregate employment stability.     

The manufacturing strategy formulation process: Linking multifunctional viewpoints

While there has been considerable research on the content of manufacturing strategy, there is a paucity of literature concerning the process of manufacturing strategy formulation [Ward, P.T., Brickford, D.J., Leong, G.K., 1996. Configuration of manufacturing strategy, business strategy, environment, and structure, J. Manage., 22(4) 597–626; Leong, G.K., Snyder, D.L., Ward, P.T., 1990. Research in the process and content of manufacturing strategy, Omega, 18(2) 109–122]. Many researchers have highlighted the need to overcome this deficiency by studying the process of developing manufacturing strategy [Adam, E.E., Swamidass, P.M., 1989. Assessing operations management from a strategic perspective, J. Manage., 15(2) 181–203; Anderson et al., 1989; Leong, G.K., Snyder, D.L., Ward, P.T., 1990. Research in the process and content of manufacturing strategy, Omega, 18(2) 109–122]. To effectively link the manufacturing strategy of a firm to the needs of the marketplace, critical competitive factors or order-winning criteria must be understood and agreed upon both by operations and marketing managers [Hill, T.J., 1983. Manufacturing's strategic role, J. Operational Res. Soc., 34(9) 853–860; Hill, T.J., 1994. Manufacturing Strategy—Text and Cases, 2nd edn., Irwin, Homewood, IL]. For this study, we created and examined a process of establishing a set of order-winning criteria for a consumer pharmaceuticals firm which involved the participation of sixteen managers from seven functional areas over four months. The foundation of the process was developed by Hill [Hill, T.J., 1989. Manufacturing Strategy—Text and Cases. Irwin, Homewood, IL; Hill, T.J., 1994. Manufacturing Strategy—Text and Cases, 2nd edn., Irwin, Homewood, IL], however it was soon evident that additional steps were required. The expanded process we developed both exposed significantly differing views among the managers and raised several questions with important managerial and research implications.     

Managers’ Corporate Entrepreneurial Actions and Job Satisfaction

Through the development and extension of theories and scholars’ subsequent empirical analyses of significant, theoretically grounded research questions, the knowledge about corporate entrepreneurship (CE) and its successful use continues to advance. Moreover, the literature suggests important relationships between the corporate environment, managers’ entrepreneurial behavior and successful implementation of corporate entrepreneurship actions. In an attempt to test some of those relationships, we describe an empirical study of 523 managers that examines the relationships among the antecedents to managers’ entrepreneurial behavior, a decision to implement entrepreneurial actions, and resulting job satisfaction and reinforcement practices.     

The content of manufacturing strategy: An empirical study

While there has been an extensive literature written on manufacturing strategy since the 1960s, little empirical research has been done. This article reports on a study of manufacturing strategy in thirty-nine companies based on questionnaire responses received from manufacturing managers.The study indicates that things are not as bleak as the literature might suggest. About one-third of the companies appear to have a well-developed manufacturing strategy. In those cases where the manufacturing strategy exists it is consistent with the business strategy and internally consistent among mission, objectives, policies, and distinctive competence.The term “manufacturing strategy” is not well understood by the managers surveyed. When asked to state their manufacturing strategy, they gave statements about what manufacturing should be, what it should do, how it should do it, and why it should do it. Apparently, the terminology itself is confusing. Frameworks for stating both business strategies and the elements of manufacturing strategy need to be strengthened and some specific suggestions are given in the article for doing so.Even though two-thirds of the companies did not have well-developed manufacturing strategies, 80% of the managers felt that manufacturing had lent competitive strength to the business. This was being done through the development of a distinctive competence in manufacturing that provided competitive advantage.Manufacturing strategies seemed to follow from business strategy. This is contrary to the literature, which indicates that manufacturing strategy is missing, or, at the very least inconsistent with business strategy and marketing strategy. Perhaps a stronger relationship exists than was previously thought. This article provides some evidence for establishing this premise and also provides data on the general status of strategy in manufacturing today.     

Caught in the Middle: Organizational Impediments to Middle Managers’ Work-life Balance

As increased work demands and longer working hours become the reality for many employees, the concept of work-life balance has received increasing attention. This paper presents findings from an exploratory study of Australian middle managers, which investigated the impact of middle managers’ daily organizational experiences on their lives both in and beyond the workplace. We focus on respondents’ reports of the difficulty in achieving work-life balance, specifically, the organizational impediments to creating balance. Three particular areas where these impediments were apparent are: the impact of new technologies; limits to autonomy and control in the middle management role; and difficulties in taking advantage of flexibility initiatives in the workplace. As middle managers are caught in the middle between work and personal life, there is a need for organizations to support middle managers’ efforts to achieve work-life balance if the organization’s long-term goals are to be achieved.     

The role of returnee executives in improving green innovation performance of Chinese manufacturing enterprises: Implications for sustainable development strategy

Environmental problems in China have attracted global attention. Grafting returnee executives' green resources to Chinese manufacturing enterprises is an effective way to solve China's sustainable development problems. This paper focuses on the impact of returnee executives and the heterogeneity of returnee and local executives on green innovation performance and the moderating effects of environmental regulation and managerial ties. The paper builds on data from 276 Chinese manufacturing enterprises. The results show that returnee executives tend to achieve sustainable development through green innovation. However, not all kinds of heterogeneity between returnee and local executives can promote green innovation performance. In addition, environmental regulation and managerial ties, as two important external moderation variables, have different impacts and different extents of impact on the relationship between returnee executives and four aspects (R&D, manufacturing, marketing, and management) of green innovation performance, that is, environmental regulation positively moderates the relationship between returnee executives and green manufacturing and management innovation performance but negatively moderates the relationship between returnee executives and green R&D and marketing innovation performance. These findings have clear management implications for Chinese manufacturing enterprises.     

Managing transformational change: the role of human resource professionals

In the past decade human resource management issues featured prominently in debates over the competitiveness and human resource professionals were expected to ascend to positions of greater influence in corporate strategy making and implementation. Despite numerous calls for a paradigm shift towards a more ‘strategic’ focus for human resource management research, developments in both practice and research fell far short of expectations. Thus, the process of transforming human resource policy into a strategic asset for employees, individual firms or the American economy is not yet complete. The paper suggests that the ‘strategic’ human resource management models of the 1980s were too limited and reactive in character because they depended so heavily on the values, strategies and support of top executives and line managers. A model capable of achieving sustained and transformational change needs to incorporate more active roles of other stakeholders in the employment relationship, including government, employes and union representatives as well as line managers and top executives. The paper starts by reviewing the evidence on innovations in human resource management in the past decade and then outlines the implications of the change model for human resource management and industrial relations theory, policy and practice. Special emphasis is given to the role of human resource professionals as potential change agents or facilitators of the transformational process.     

Behind clients’ doors: What hinders client firms from “professionally” dealing with consultancy?

Prior research has located the issue of “professional” conduct with consultancy predominantly within the relationship between the manager and the consultant. However, recent studies provide indications that dealing professionally with consultancy may fail because of goal divergences between the individual managers and the organization. The first aim of this article is to re-examine this assumption theoretically, by drawing on agency theory, and empirically, by focusing on a single case study. Through this approach certain attitudes exhibited by managers are identified, which hinder dealing with consultancy in a professional manner across the entire organization. This observation motivates the second aim of the article: since the managers’ attitudes deviate from the company's goals in dealings with consultancy, the adequacy of governance measures needs to be analyzed. Several researchers have observed that companies primarily use control-based measures, like central procurement rules or policies, to govern managers dealing with consultancy. However, these measures are not readily accepted by managers. In view of the above, this study investigates alternative measures, which are summarized as incentive-based measures.     

Human resource managers' role consistency and HR performance indicators: the moderating effect of interpersonal trust in Taiwan

This study explores the consistency between human resource (HR) managers' roles and HR performance indicators. In particular it considers the moderating effects of interpersonal trust on the relationship between HR managers' roles and HR performance indicators. We selected 116 HR managers from the top 500 manufacturing companies in Taiwan as our sample, and hierarchical regression analysis was conducted to test our hypotheses. The results showed that the HR managers' roles were consistent with HR performance indicators. Also, a high level of affective trust weakened the positive relationship between HR manager roles and HR performance indicators. Thus we suggested that Chinese companies should design HR performance indicators according to the roles HR managers play. Additionally, when HR managers are playing the role of a strategic partner or change agent, top executives should avoid high affective trust with HR managers.     

Interpreting Value at Risk (VaR) forecasts

Value at Risk (VaR) forecasts have been increasingly accepted globally by both risk managers and regulators as a tool to identify and control exposure to financial market risk. However, modern portfolios are characterized by a constantly changing composition of security holdings that reflect portfolio managers’ strategies, expected prices, and net cash flows into the portfolio. As a result of these factors, portfolio returns are time-varying mixtures of distributions which are unlikely to be well approximated by conventional methods.     

The effect of human resource practices on organizational performance: evidence from Greece

The present study addresses a central research question: how do human resource management practices contribute to organizational performance? We examined the following HR practices: (1) job security; (2) selective hiring; (3) self-managed teams and decentralization of decision making; (4) compensation policy; (5) extensive training; and (6) information sharing. We surveyed food managers in Greece and recorded their perceptions on HR practices and their relation to firm performance.

Results provide overall support for all HR practices except of job security. Selective hiring was found to be a key practice that improved organizational performance. Compensation policy, information sharing, decentralization of decision making and extensive training were significant predictors for all performance variables. Directions for further research are provided.     

R&D strategy and Australian manufacturing industry: an empirical investigation of emphasis and effectivness

This research investigates the degree of emphasis placed by the Australian manufacturing industry on Research and Development (R&D) strategy as well as on other organisational strategies such as marketing, HRs (HR), technology, and operations at the functional level. The research extends further to investigate whether the emphasis on R&D strategy differs with contextual factors such as firm size, firm’s generic strategy, type of market, firm’s life cycle stage, etc. A mail survey was carried out to collect information from manufacturing firms across Australia. This was followed by an on-site interview of some of the senior managers of manufacturing firms from three Australian states: South Australia, Victoria and New South Wales.The study found that although the emphasis on R&D strategy has received a high priority in the past few years, it has not been as effective as the operations strategy and the technology strategy. The operations strategy has been accorded the highest importance in the past few years and this will continue in the future. The study also indicated that firms, which adopt a differentiation generic strategy, put more emphasis on R&D than the firms, which adopt cost leadership and focus generic strategies. The results did not indicate any evidence of a relationship between firm size and the R&D strategy although large firms are found to put more emphasis on operations and marketing strategies. Relatively higher emphasis was placed on the R&D strategy by businesses: at the growth stage; involved in the manufacture of consumer goods as opposed to industrial goods; involved in exports with a higher sales growth in export markets; and having a higher growth rate relative to their industry.     

A review of the literature on environmental innovation management in SMEs: implications for public policies

The aim of this article is to collect and make up the most important contributions in the economic literature in relation to the special characteristics of the management of the environmental innovation in the SMEs. Specifically, we want to show their strengths and weaknesses in order to make up the main conclusions of these analyses with the literature in relation to the way Public Administrations face this situation. The scarce development in the SMEs in respect to their environmental strategy may be a consequence of the links among some of the following factors: limited financial resources, the type of organizational structure, a little influence of the strategic adaptation competence against the changes in the SMEs, the managers’ scarce environmental training and short term orientation, the staff’s scarce environmental awareness and training, the status of the environmental issues in the company, the SMEs’ lower ability to obtain highly radical innovations, the scarce influence of manufacturing process flexibility in the most advanced states of the environmental strategy in the SMEs and their lack of relation ability with external stakeholders—very important in the success of the most advanced environmental approaches. Besides, the lack of regulation neutrality must be added as a key difference among companies of different sizes. So specific actions seem be necessary, such as technological advice and awareness, and training programs in order to cooperate with external stakeholders.     

Success chess

Too many managers and executives play at the game of success rather than play a strategy to win. There are rules for effective career management that increase value to both the corporation and the individual.     

Designing production planning and control systems

This paper presents a contingency model designed to explain aggregate differences in the specifications for production planning and control systems across firms. The specifications for a firm's system, stated broadly in terms of the investment in information processing systems and organizational integrativeness, are related to that firm's competitive strategy and environment. An analysis of data from a limited sample of companies, and a panel of managers, provides insights into the applicability of the concepts used in the model, and its potential usefulness.     

The impact of appointment-based CEO connectedness on firms’ performance and profitability

This paper investigates whether the performance variables of newly added intangible capital elements give the appointment relationship a deeper impact on the firms’ performance and profitability. We document that after correcting for endogeneity, when considering intangible capital, Total Q is a better proxy than Tobin’s Q for explaining the effect of appointment-based CEO connectedness on firm performance and profitability. Furthermore, we show that the influence of directors on company performance and profitability is more important than that of executives or managers. We also find that the stronger the appointment relationship, the worse the company’s performance and profitability. We further provide a series of alternative interpretations and robustness test evidence showing that intangible capital is more important for high technology and internet firms than industrial firms. Further, we find that the greater the number of executives appointed by the CEO, the better the firm’s research and development, but the worse the firm’s investment policy.     

Understanding managerial preferences in selecting equipment

Industry continues to look for methods of gaining competitive advantage through manufacturing techniques. These techniques, however, can be matched by competitors if used without the guidance of a strategic framework. Similarly, structural capacity choices can be matched by competitors without the infrastructural benefits of a well defined operations strategy. In this study, multiattribute utility (MAU) theory analysis was used in an experiment to quantify the contribution of various structural and infrastructural strategic factors toward sustaining competitive advantage within the context of a capital equipment selection decision. The experimental respondents were manufacturing managers and professionals from the plastics industry. This research provides groundwork for understanding the role of strategic infrastructural factors in sustaining competitive advantage within the structural capacity decision of selecting capital equipment in the plastics industry.