How to achieve cost savings and strategic performance in purchasing simultaneously: A knowledge-based view

The competitive advantage purchasing provides has been debated for decades. For a novel perspective we derive a theoretical framework grounded in the knowledge-based view in order to examine how purchasing knowledge and purchasing integration impact cost and strategic performance. The derived hypotheses are tested based on extensive secondary data from a large European multinational utility company. The 179 studied ‘purchasing-internal client relationships’ contain real contracted savings data and internal client ratings of purchasing knowledge, purchasing integration and strategic purchasing performance. We show that purchasing knowledge is a major antecedent for both savings and strategic purchasing performance. This effect is further amplified by purchasing integration. With this study, we extend the understanding of the purchasing knowledge–performance link. We conclude that purchasing knowledge becomes particularly valuable when combined with other functions' processes through purchasing integration. This causal chain is also supported through general knowledge-based view theory. Moreover, we provide numerical evidence of the value of knowledge creation and integration processes to purchasing professionals in our managerial implications based on results obtained from actual purchasing savings data.     

Employee commitment to the organization and customer reactions: mapping the linkages

Although it has been claimed that the attitudes that employees have toward their work influence how customers react to the organization, its service and products, relatively little empirical research has examined these possible linkages. The focus in this article is on the relations between organizational commitment and customer reactions (e.g., customer satisfaction, repeat purchase behavior). Specifically, we review relevant theory and research, discuss methodological issues associated with examining this issue, and make recommendations for both researchers and human resource (HR) practitioners interested in mapping linkages between organizational commitment and customer reactions.     

Unit-level linkages between employee commitment to the organization,customer service delivery and customer satisfaction

Service profit chain and service climate research identifies the importance of employee attitudes and employee service behavior as mediating between organizational practices and customer satisfaction. While the importance of employee attitudes and customer service performance are acknowledged, there are calls to more precisely specify proximal mediators between employee attitudes and customer satisfaction. We propose a model in which the relationship between unit-level organizational commitment and customer attitudes is not direct but mediated via employees' customer service delivery including queuing time, serving time and service quality. We conducted a longitudinal unit-level analysis (N = 39) aggregating employee (N over 893) organizational commitment and customer (N over 1248) satisfaction data, and customer service behavior drawn from organizational records. Our model received reasonable support from basic tests of the predictive associations between unit-level organizational commitment, customer-relevant employee behaviors and customer satisfaction; however, organizational commitment was not found to be an important predictor in more rigorous change analyses. The findings as a whole therefore suggest that organizational commitment is a feature of units delivering fast, quality service, but its causal role is as yet unclear.     

Supply-management maturity, cost savings and purchasing absorptive capacity: Testing the procurement–performance link

The relationship between the development level a purchasing organisation has reached—maturity—and its impact on the performance of a firm has received only limited attention until now. We conducted extensive purchasing audits using a comprehensive tool to assess firms’ maturity level. These firms’ performance was then measured by their success in a purchasing cost-reduction programme. The results showed a highly significant relationship between purchasing's maturity level and cost-reduction results. Somewhat counter-intuitively, larger saving potential was identified in more developed firms. This finding may be explained by a new concept called “purchasing absorptive capacity”. If an organisation's maturity is too low, the introduction of best practices, such as an innovative cost-reduction method, may fail.     

Hybrid structures: innovative governance,judicial and sociological approaches

Quality & Quantity - The aim of this study is to examine the new trends in the hybridity research area and clarify the convergence of interests among state actors, private actors and civil...     

Flexible learning systems and obsolete organization structures: steps towards bridging the gap

This study explores the mismatch between existing learning systems and the members’ needs for learning in a large international organization. It responds to recent research which argues that members’ learning modes need to be understood and catered for in modern age organizations. Rather than arguing from “what should be”, however, it explores “what is”, by analysing the mismatch developing in a classical organization. Based on the findings, an instrumental model is elaborated, which combines structural and cognitive factors. A main argument is that learning systems and organization structure inhibit one another mutually, which prevents lasting change from taking place. The key to resolving mutual inhibition is to engage in a process of inquiry which focuses on the overall structure and also the learning systems. Three characteristics of such a process of inquiry are proposed as requirements for the resolution of mutual inhibition: social context, setting and proximity.     

Flexible forecasts: a key to better customer service

Good customer service requires companies to keep their fingers on their customers' pulse and develop intelligent forecasts with their needs built in. As even the smallest factories today are placing at least some emphasis on lead time reductions to improve flexibility and the speed of response to customer requirements, the role of the forecast, now more than ever, is to provide at all times the best, most recent, and most accurate picture of what exactly will be required and when.     

From supply to demand chain management: efficiency and customer satisfaction

How do companies in the fast-growing industries achieve good customer satisfaction together with efficiency in supply chain management (SCM)? This inductive case study of six customer cases of Nokia Networks, one of the leading providers of mobile telecommunication technology, led to propositions exploring that question. Good relationship between the customer and the supplier contributes to reliable information flows, and reliable demand information flows in turn contribute to high efficiency—these are well-researched issues also in other industry environments. But in a fast-growing systems business such as mobile telecommunications industry, the supplier needs to be able to adapt its offering to a wide variety of customer situations and needs. Understanding the customer’s situation and need together with the right offering contributes to good co-operation in improving the joint demand chain, which further leads to superior demand chain efficiency and high customer satisfaction.     

Follow the trails: A path to systematically designing corporate alumni programs

Organizations today are facing increasing amounts of turnover and evolving labor markets. When employees leave they become corporate alumni, which initial research suggests are an important and valuable part of an organization’s network. Corporate alumni can provide value as brand ambassadors, a source of employee referral, as a return employee (i.e. boomerang), or through knowledge sharing. One way to establish a strong network of alumni and achieve some of these benefits is to establish a corporate alumni program (CAP). Although CAPs are increasingly being recognized as beneficial for organizations, little is known about how to systematically design and implement these programs to enhance the likelihood of success. In this article, we utilize instructional systems design processes to offer guidance for how to strategically develop CAPs. We analyze existing programs to highlight common elements and use this research as a basis for creating the TRAILS typology, a way to designate practices for CAP implementation. We also suggest ways to evaluate and determine whether these programs are successful.     

Front-line responses to customer orientation programmes: a theoretical and empirical analysis

Programmes designed to strengthen customer orientation among front-line service workers represent one of the most common forms of culture change initiatives within service organizations. Despite their importance to contemporary management theory and practice, we know relatively little about how employees react to interventions of this kind, and why they react as they do. The paper aims to address this gap in the literature. It does this through an analysis of front line reactions to a major customer care initiative in one of the largest supermarket chains in the UK. Using data from a large-scale employee survey carried out in seven stores, we first propose a general typology of employee responses to customer care programmes. We then examine some typical employee profiles associated with the main types of response. The analysis is placed within a wider theoretical context consisting of a critical overview of the main theories which might help explain the nature of general and individual reactions to culture change programmes. To this end, we address and draw upon a variety of literatures and debates linked to various aspects of organization and management, industrial psychology, training and development and critical discourse analysis.     

Impacts on optimum location of different pricing strategies,market structures and customer distributions over space

This paper considers the ways in which pricing policies will affect location choice in both monopolistic and duopolistic markets. It is shown that the monopolist's optimal location depends crucially on the shapes of demand and delivery cost functions and the pricing policy applied. The median location is unlikely to be chosen. With spatial competition, pricing strategies also affect location choice. There will be greater production concentration under f.o.b. or uniform delivered pricing than under optimal discriminatory pricing. For certain consumer distributions, Hotelling-type concentration is to be expected whereas collusion will lead to some dispersion of production.     

A transaction cost approach to analysing industrial districts

This article determines whether transaction cost theory can be used as a framework for analysing industrial district relationships, using the Gnosjö/Anderstorp industrial district in Sweden as a case example. Interviews with six firm owner/managers, representatives from the trade union and the local industrial development centre were conducted. Data was analysed using pattern matching in accordance to the theoretical framework. The findings indicate that interfirm relationships in the industrial district are motivated by the desire to reduce transaction costs. The article offers an alternative perspective in analysing industrial districts as current studies use network theory in explaining the industrial district phenomena.     

Developing a decision rule to predict failure: The case of savings and loan associations

The relative costs of misclassifying institutions by their financial health is an issue that concerns researchers. In this paper, a model and decision rule are developed that improve the probability of identifying those Savings and Loans that are predicted not to fail, but are actually failing. For obvious reasons, stakeholders in those institutions are very much interested in avoiding this type I error. The study also makes available evidence that the examination of Z-scores can be useful in identifying other financial institutions that may experience financial failure.     

债务资本成本:一个基本的理论问题

债务成本是资本成本的一个重要内容,在筹资、投资的资本结构决策中均得到了广泛的应用。但债务成本概念与计算在中外研究中均存在模糊、不合理之处。本文通过对中外研究的对比,结合货币时间价值计算的基本原理,提出了债务成本概念和债务成本计算的新思路,修正了现行的不合理的计算方法。并在此基础上提出了新的计算公式。     

Improving customer experience in tourism: A framework for stakeholder collaboration

Tourism represents a service industry replete with unique complexities since a tourist's overall experience is modulated by multiple stakeholders, e.g., immigration officials at airports, policy makers responsible for investment in transportation infrastructure and managers at various tourist attractions. Effective management of customer satisfaction in this service sector entails cross-functional collaboration and a transparent measurement scheme that clearly delineates the impact of each stakeholder's actions on overall customer experience. In this paper, we propose a simple conceptual framework for stakeholder collaboration in tourism. A four-phase customer experience measurement process is developed to prioritize resource allocation and to increase tourists' advocacy levels for a destination. The proposed measurement framework has wide applicability and can also be exercised in the context of other public sector services, e.g., mass transit systems. We illustrate the process using an empirical case study at Chennai, a tourist destination in India and provide a number of substantive insights that are valid for this destination.     

A structural compendium on service quality and customer satisfaction: A survey of banks in India

ABSTRACT

The core aim of the research is to measure and analyze the quality of services offered by the top three public- and private-sector banks in India and to attempt to know how bank services quality affects customer satisfaction. By administering both questionnaires and personal interviews, researchers garnered the opinions of a total of 600 respondents with BANKQUAL statement. The authors applied Cronbach’s alpha to test reliability and the selected hypotheses have been proven with Chi-square tests and t-tests. All the public-sector banks chosen for the study lead in the satisfaction index over the private-sector banks by demonstrating differences in the dimensions of credibility, influence, and geographic spread. The research is most precious to diverse stakeholders of the Indian banking industry, particularly to banks who want to know about their existing service quality for further improvement. For the first time, the researchers introduced the comprehensive BANKQUAL statement to test out the quality of bank services in India.     

Measuring cost savings in the operating room: a matter of FOCUS (follow-through, obsolescence, control, utilization, standardization)

In summary, changes came slowly at first in the OR. The biggest inventory reduction came about a year after the effort had begun. It would seem that tackling obsolescence, standardizing products, etc. would give an initial "big chunk" savings, with small amounts coming later as inventories are lowered. What we expected did not occur, due to the inherent nature of practices and what was customarily being used. For example, previously, some equipment purchases were paid for by purchasing product, which resulted in long-term commitments and high supply costs. The OR at times seemed more like a process of managing change, not just supplies. FOCUS is a daily process. How many times can you afford to overlook this process? How often are the mistakes of the past repeated? In review, we suggest this simple outline: Follow-through (review each case from start to finish), Obsolescence (schedule inventories every six months), Control (achieve inventory management by adjusting PAR levels to needs), Utilization (utilize product/equipment with your control), and Standardization (standardize products and measure results).