A note on ‘beyond the trade-off and cumulative capabilities models: alternative models of operations strategy’

Sarmiento, Roberto; Whelan, Garvan; Thürer, Matthias

doi:10.1080/00207543.2018.1428773

Cited by 10 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 23 publications

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“…The trade-off theory originated in 1969, after Skinner (1969) published an article that argued managers should consider trade-offs between competitive dimensions during manufacturing strategy development. Several interpretations of the trade-off theory exist, and more recently, Skinner (1996, p. 3) elaborated on his earlier articles stating “Choices must be made; trade offs are inevitable; one system cannot be outstanding enough at meeting all criteria to create competitive advantage” (cited in Sarmiento et al , 2018). The trade-off criteria include the key competitive capabilities of quality, delivery, flexibility and cost (Rosenzweig and Easton, 2010).…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Improving productivity through strategic alignment of competitive capabilities

Hutton

Eldridge

2019

IJPPM

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Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the productivity performance at the firm level from the perspective of manufacturing capability development at the process level. Moreover, it reveals how alignment of manufacturing capabilities with market requirements has influenced a firm’s productivity over a period that includes the 2008 global recession. Design/methodology/approach A conceptual framework was derived from established theories and employed as part of a case study design encompassing a multiple methods research approach. The case of a UK SME was selected to reflect some of the issues associated with the wider productivity stagnation experienced by the UK economy in recent years. Findings The firm’s manufacturing strategy had become incrementally misaligned with market requirements due to external changes in its business environment. The complex relationships between capabilities such as quality, speed and cost were characterised. Realigning the firm’s manufacturing strategy to regain productivity performance required a range of prioritised actions including capital investment and changes in management practices concerning bottom-up process improvement and regular, top-down strategy review. Research limitations/implications The findings of the case study cannot be generalised and the outcomes are specific to just one firm. However, the approach lends itself to replication, particularly within SMEs. Originality/value Prior studies have focussed on capability development at higher levels of abstraction. The study operationalized established theoretical perspectives at the firm level to derive context-based outcomes that can be used to improve manufacturing strategy alignment and productivity. Furthermore, the study contributes empirical evidence from the SME sector to the ongoing debate regarding the UK’s productivity puzzle.

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Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Improving productivity through strategic alignment of competitive capabilities

Hutton

Eldridge

2019

IJPPM

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“…For instance, since one of IJPR's aims is to publish research concerned with 'manufacturing strategy, policy formulation and evaluation' (Taylor and Francis Online 2018), there seems to be great potential for future research focused on inter-firm collaboration and competition via manufacturing strategy, organisation and capabilities (see, e.g. Adebanjo, Teh, and Ahmed 2018;Sarmiento, Whelan, and Thürer 2018) to find better balance between strategic, tactical and operational decisions (Meredith and Pilkington 2018). Despite this, IJPR's most frequent and recent topics remain more focused on operational contexts rather than strategic ones.…”

Section: Future Ijpr Research Opportunitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Trends and topics in IJPR from 1961 to 2017: a statistical history

Romero-Silva

Marsillac

2018

International Journal of Production Research

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This paper studies the history of the International Journal of Production Research (IJPR) by analysing the topics that have received the most attention in each of the journal's publication years. Text mining exposed for scrutiny the most frequently mentioned and cited terms contained in the titles, abstracts and keywords of IJPR papers. Analyses suggest that the triad of scheduling/optimisation/simulation and supply-chain-related topics have been IJPR's mainstays, but valuable opportunities remain for relevant topics that have not yet been concurrently and frequently studied. Results also show that terms related to sustainability and risk management topics have gained recent relevance. In addition, IJPR appears to complement its modelling technique focus with empirical methodological approaches to provide a well-balanced perspective, since the 'case study' term is common. Finally, a linear relationship is found between the number of papers that have covered certain topics and the number of citations those topics have received, highlighting which topics had fewer or more citations than expected, given the number of papers that covered those topics. IJPR stands as one of the most prestigious and established journals in its field and the results from this study indicate the evolving interests of the field for over half a century.

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“…Building on the assumptions of the trade-offs model (Boyer and Lewis, 2002;Sarmiento et al, 2018;Skinner, 1996;Sum et al, 2004), the research incorporates the environmental factors which are recognised as crucial in HA but under-explored in OM (e.g., Liu et al, 2018). This enables meaningful contribution to the long-standing debate in HA about IHO practices in conflict settings (e.g., Donini and Maxwell, 2013;Fast et al, 2013;Hilhorst et al, 2016;Taithe, 2014) and leads to insights into HAspecific issues in hostile environments.…”

Section: Operations Strategy For Hostile Environmentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For instance, delivery speed is essential in humanitarian operations-lives are lost if assistance arrives too late (Overstreet et al, 2011). One way of simplifying the task of linking performance objectives to outcomes is to evaluate OM objectives on the basis of widely observable characteristics like cost, quality, and delivery (Sarmiento et al, 2016(Sarmiento et al, & 2018. We adopt this approach in this research and focus on determining OM performance objectives (referred to as OM objectives hereafter) and related performance outcomes.…”

Section: Performance Objectives and Outcomesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…argument is that resource scarcity makes it impossible to prioritise all performance objectives of cost, quality, speed, flexibility, and reliability. Hence, regardless of the context, no single organisation can thrive on all operational aspects (e.g., Boyer and Lewis, 2002;Sarmiento et al, 2018;Skinner, 1996;Sum et al, 2004). Thus, although both HA and OM perspectives are concerned with the best possible outcomes, they seem to address different aspects of this problem.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Mission impossible: operations management in complex, extreme, and hostile environments

Dube¹

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The environments in which international humanitarian organisations (IHOs) operate are not just complex, they are knotty. There are multiple features of the humanitarian context that create insurmountable obstacles for IHOs as they try to deliver life-saving assistance to populations in distress. For instance, extremely disruptive events caused by natural and manmade disasters happen in this context. Moreover, IHOs often face hostility as conflicts have become more dangerous and widespread. The realisation that the humanitarian context has such unique features led to a dedicated research stream for humanitarian operations in Operations Management (OM) in the mid-2000s. Interestingly, crises in other contexts have been observed to share similar features. Consequently, researchers increasingly argue that much can also be learned about conducting operations under impossible conditions from this context. Most recently, researchers have highlighted some lessons to be learned from the humanitarian sector about dealing the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, an unprecedented crisis of our time. Nevertheless, these features and their implications for operations management (OM) remain ill-understood. This PhD thesis attempts to address this shortcoming. Using the humanitarian context as a research setting, I set out to learn about operations management (OM) challenges and strategies for crisis management in general and humanitarian relief in particular.The thesis explores the implications of some of the defining features of the humanitarian context that render it knotty (complexity, extremity, and hostility) for key OM functions. Three prominent, yet under-researched, phenomena are used as the basis for unravelling those implications, i.e., complex emergencies, overlapping disasters (i.e., concurrent crises) and armed conflicts. ComplexityIn the first study (Chapter 2), the phenomenon of interest is complex emergencies which are defined by the World Health Organisation as situations in which there is a "breakdown of state structures, the disputed legitimacy of host authorities, the abuse viii of human rights and possibly armed conflict". Complex emergencies constitute the majority of humanitarian crises world-wide, are increasingly the backdrop against which major natural disasters occur, and tend to be protracted crises. The politically charged nature of complex emergencies implies that host governments tend to behave in ways that induce complexity in humanitarian operations.The first study sought to understand how and why host governments behave towards IHOs and the subsequent impact on humanitarian logistics. Three factors are found to influence host government behaviour, namely (i) the levels of tensions between their strategic interests and those of IHOs, (ii) their general level of dependency on IHO services and (iii) their regulatory and enforcement capabilities. The sources of tension between host government-IHO interests range from political reasons that, for example, lead to restricted IHO access to areas controlled by no...

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A note on ‘beyond the trade-off and cumulative capabilities models: alternative models of operations strategy’

Cited by 10 publications

References 23 publications

Improving productivity through strategic alignment of competitive capabilities

Improving productivity through strategic alignment of competitive capabilities

Trends and topics in IJPR from 1961 to 2017: a statistical history

Mission impossible: operations management in complex, extreme, and hostile environments

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