How supply chain architecture and product architecture impact firm performance: An empirical examination

In order to enhance performance, manufacturing firms are building various capabilities and utilizing supply chain networks that are geographically dispersed around the globe. This study examines how decisions related to supply chain architecture and product architecture influence organizational competitiveness. Building on the co-specialization perspective, we evaluate the performance implications of product modularity and supply chain agility. While, product modularity constitutes a product configuration related to sourcing and assembling of products, supply chain agility is a supply chain configuration related to velocity (sensing, comprehending, and responding) and visibility (supplier network, internal operations, and external environment). Both the product and supply chain architectural decisions can impact performance, individually and in conjunction with each other. We empirically test the hypothesized relationships using data collected from 103 manufacturing firms. Results show that supply chain agility and product modularity directly enhance responsiveness and enable organizations to reduce cost. Furthermore, supply chain agility partially mediates the relationship between product modularity and both responsiveness and cost reduction. We elaborate on the key contributions of this study for both research and practice, discuss limitations, and also offer various avenues for further research.     

Learning from the alien: knowledge relationships with temporary workers in network contexts

This paper contributes to our understanding of the role of temporary workers in learning for innovation in network contexts. The strategy literature advocates that the knowledge and talent of workers is vital to competitive success yet at the same time temporary workers are becoming more prevalent, making relationships with workers more ephemeral. These shifting competitive and employment contexts make insights into learning from, and with, contractual nomads paramount. The setting is the UK television industry, where such workers are dominant. Internationally, creative industries are a prime site of networks where temporary workers are brought together for specific projects. In the television industry, a range of knowledge attachment employee relationships have been developed by firms to ‘contain’ and sustain worker contributions in terms of knowledge and talent. These relationships are identified as freelance, regular contract, golden handcuffs and invest in knowledge firm. This paper highlights the learning implications both positive and negative arising from these different ways of relating to temporary workers thereby extending our understanding of employee relationships built on mutuality.     

Applying sales promotion competitions to nonprofit contexts

This paper discusses the applicability of sales promotions within not‐for‐profit (NFP) marketing, and argues that some of the widely held prejudices about sales promotions have acted to obscure their potential contribution to a range of NFP markets. Understanding this potential requires a clearer understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of specific sales promotion techniques. The paper presents frameworks for classifying both sales promotions and marketing contexts, which can help an understanding of which sales promotions might work in particular NFP contexts. The paper then focuses on a specific type of sales promotion, which represents a potentially valuable and versatile tool for NFP marketers, the sales promotion competition. It details the benefits that sales promotion competitions can offer NFP marketers, and also contributes some guidelines to aid in running them effectively. Copyright © 2003 Henry Stewart Publications     

Living Decently

One of the reasons why poverty lines became popular at the turn of the century was their promise of a scientific technique that would dispense with moralising about poverty. We argue that a price paid in this quest has been an impoverishment of the richness of the notion of 'a decent life', the moral concept underlying poverty. In addition, poverty lines have in practice been more to do with inequality at the bottom end of the income distribution than with poverty. The purpose of this article is to rehabilitate the measurement of poverty, and to make it credible. We set out our preferred method of poverty measurement, and illustrate it using data from the Australian Standard of Living Study. A feature of our approach is to distinguish clearly between issues of inequality and issues of poverty. Questions such as who is on the bottom of the income distribution, whether this has changed over time, and how income levels of the worst off compare with the mean, are questions of inequality. As such, the answers tell us nothing at all about how the worst off are actually living. To answer that question, we require direct measures of consumption and of social participation. These measures are not as simple, but they provide us with knowledge about poverty that poverty lines have promised, but have not delivered in a credible fashion.     

Double-fortified salt reduces anemia,benefit:cost ratio is modestly favorable

Iron deficiency is very widespread, with adverse consequences for health and cognition. Iron supplementation is not popular for long-term use, and cereal fortification is not feasible where milling occurs locally. Double-fortified salt (DFS: using both iron and iodine) is an alternative. The study undertakes a literature survey to find the effect of DFS on hemoglobin, and then uses a previous algorithm to make calculations for India. The benefit:cost ratio was estimated as 2.4:1 if only the benefits to children and women were included, and between 4:1 and 5:1 if anemia levels for men also decreased. This is just a little lower than the median ratio estimated for iron fortification of cereal staples (6.7:1), for home fortification for children less than two (37:1), and for biofortification – breeding for high iron – of cereals (high, but no exact figure available). Double-fortified salt is therefore a good alternative for improving iron status in populations where fortification of other staple foods does not achieve desired coverage.     

The impact of prior firm financial performance on subsequent corporate reputation

This study links corporate reputation, as measured byFortune magazine's Most Admired list, with firm financial performance. Seven measures of financial risk and return were collected for a sample of 149 firms from two time periods, 1981 and 1986. The mean score of four attributes from the 1993Fortune Most Admired list for the sample was then analyzed with the financial data through regression analysis. Two financial variables, Standard Deviation of the Market Return of the Firm and Return on Sales, explained between 0.12 and 0.14 of subsequent reputation. The implication for management is that they can affect a firm's subsequent reputation by lowering financial risk and controlling costs.Sue Annis Hammond is an Organizational Development Consultant based in Dallas, Texas. She has over ten years of internal consulting experience from her work at Meredith Corporation and Principal Financial Group. After taking time off from paid employment to complete a Masters of Organizational Development, she founded Kodiak Consulting, which specializes in the area of corporate culture change.John W. Slocum, Jr. holds the O. Paul Corley Chair in Management at the Cox School of Business at Southern Methodist University. He has received the Nicholas Salgo Distinguished Teaching and the Rotunda Outstanding Faculty Awards while on the faculty of SMU. He serves as a consultant to numerous organizations in the area of human resources management.     

Outdoor management development: the mediating effect of the client organisation

This article reports on a study comparing the impact of an outdoor management development (OMD) programme on delegates from two different client organisations. By keeping the provider constant it is possible to assess how organisational factors mediate the transfer of learning from a development event back to the workplace. The results show that, while the programme had a very positive immediate impact on the delegates from both companies—they felt they had learnt a lot and that they were working better as a team—in only one of the companies was this change sustained back in the work-place. Follow-up interviews with delegates, four months after the event, highlighted that in the company where transfer was not evident, there were considerable organisational barriers. In this instance at least, it was not the OMD programme that was ‘at fault’ but the organisation climate or culture which impeded any transfer of learning.