No abstract

In all manufacturing firms, using appropriate manufacturing capabilities to gain competitive advantages is of crucial concern. There were scant theories that might help manufacturing firms to select the manufacturing capabilities appropriate for their own situations. Competitive strategy theorists believed that there was always a trade-off impasse between different types of capabilities selections. Some other theorists, however, ruled out this trade-off concern because they believed that manufacturing capabilities were developed through a reinforcement order, which is similar to the formation of a sand-cone. This paper consolidated these two streams of thought, proposing a dual sand-cone perspective. Abstracting from the extant literature, we considered the competitiveness of manufacturing companies from two principal perspectives, i.e. the operation leanness and the new-value creativeness. Different types of manufacturing capabilities should be developed to fit in with the different statuses and paths of competitiveness growth. A path-and-stage identification method was also suggested for monitoring the sequence of capabilities development. Two case studies were provided to illustrate the applicability of the dual sand-cone concept.

If you would like to write for this, or any other Emerald publication, then please use our Emerald for Authors service information about how to choose which publication to write for and submission guidelines are available for all. Please visit www.emeraldinsight.com/authors for more information. About Emerald www.emeraldinsight.comEmerald is a global publisher linking research and practice to the benefit of society. The company manages a portfolio of more than 290 journals and over 2,350 books and book series volumes, as well as providing an extensive range of online products and additional customer resources and services.Emerald is both COUNTER 4 and TRANSFER compliant. The organization is a partner of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and also works with Portico and the LOCKSS initiative for digital archive preservation.Abstract The ultimate objective of knowledge management is to effectively maintain and transfer the necessary knowledge to the operation's staff. The conventional knowledge-management methods may only be suitable for the larger-sized enterprise, but, for the small and medium-sized companies, it is difficult to spare dedicated resources (people, time, and money) to manage the knowledge-accumulation and dissemination-activities. The work presented in this paper proposes a method to overcome some of these difficulties. A role-modification approach is used to stimulate an autonomously conducted knowledge transfer. New knowledge is developed and managed by the person who successfully takes up a new role in work team. To achieve role modification, ordinary staff-training methods may not be effective. Psychotherapists already have a set of rolemodification practices to assist people having role problems. Benchmarking is a suitable methodology to apply to these practices. The authors assisted an engineering-and-design company in adopting this psychotherapists' practice and applied it to a work-team environment. One of their team members was induced to undergo a role modification and an autonomous knowledgetransfer experience.

Repurposing a learning activity on academic integrity: the experience of three universities.

Competitive performances of manufacturing firms are affected by the strategies they selected. The implementations of strategies, as usually assumed, rely on the effectiveness of work teams. The performances of teams, to a large degree, are directed by team leaders. Therefore, the compatibility between competitive performances, manufacturing strategies, and the functions of team leaders should be explored. Based on the statistical findings obtained from other literature as well as an analysis of an international survey of manufacturing strategies. It is proposed that the compatibility is basically the relationship between the knowledge seeking behavior of team leaders and the knowledge required for improving competitive performances. We also discovered that it is worth further investigating two particular types of team leaders, i.e. shaper and company builder. Their characteristics may provide a basis to expand our understandings of team leaders' performances and the competence-based organizations of today.