Guidelines for Hoshin Kanri implementation: development and discussion

Hoshin Kanri is a strategic management framework originally conceived in Japan and recognised for developing a deployment process that integrates business strategy and operations execution. Recently, there has been a resurgence of interest regarding Hoshin Kanri implementation among western managers, who usually face cultural challenges towards its use. This leads to the necessity of systematising a set of universally applicable guiding principles or guidelines, for Hoshin Kanri initiatives. This paper presents the results of an in-depth assessment of Hoshin Kanri guidelines carried out through a systematic process of experts? interviews. It uses as its starting point a model of the guidelines that was previously developed through a systematic literature review. The revising and refining of the guidelines is carried out by discussing their conceptual foundations and 20 guidelines are presented that may aid in the implementation of Hoshin Kanri in dfferent types of organisations.     

Policy deployment: A case study analysis

Theaim of theresearch reported in thispaper wasto examine policy deployment in a business unit of the UK company operation of a major corporation, considered a world leader in business improvement. In this study, the application of policy deployment at an operational level was investigated to determine how managers deploy and manage direction, and assess the effectiveness of the catchball process. In the business unit studied, policy deployment could have a greater impact. For example, in deploying direction, cascade and catchball is used, however, the leadership, checks, control and communication elements could be more effective, and the respective shortcomings are described. A generic catch-reflect-improvescrutinize-pass (CRISP) approach to policy deployment is proposed by which vision, mission, goals, objectives, targets and means can be more effectively deployed.     

Implementation of manufacturing strategy: A select study of Indian process companies

This paper presents findings of an extensive survey of Indian process companies. Based on the survey, three companies have been selected for detailed case studies. Their experiences in the manufacturing strategy process are analysed. Although the companies represented diversity in terms of product type, sales volume, longevity and geographic location, they shared several commonalities including use of advanced manufacturing technologies. The process of strategy formulation varied among the companies in terms of participants, complexity and degree of formalization. Competitive priorities, order winners and critical success factors are identified for these companies. Based on strategic manufacturing issues, manufacturing competence index for the companies has been worked out.     

An exploratory study of manufacturing strategy practices of machinery manufacturing companies in India

This paper presents findings of a survey on manufacturing strategy practices adopted by the Indian machinery manufacturing companies (IMMC). Based on the survey, three companies have been selected for detailed case studies. Their experiences in the manufacturing strategy process are analyzed. Although the companies represented diversity in terms of product type, sales volume, and geographic location, they share several commonalties including use of advanced manufacturing technologies and use of several improvement techniques. The process of strategy formulation varied among the companies in terms of participants, complexity and degree of formalization. Competitive priorities, order winners and critical success factors are also identified for these companies. Based on strategic manufacturing issues, manufacturing competence index and business performance index for the companies has been worked out.     

“互联网+医疗健康”背景下考虑患者反馈机制的药品质量监管策略研究

药品质量关乎公众生命健康、国民经济发展、社会稳定和国家安全，一直以来都是政府和全社会关注的热点问题之一。"互联网+医疗健康"背景下药品流通速度加快使得药品安全问题影响范围扩大，因此，建立患者反馈机制是促进互联网药品质量监管的有效方式。考虑患者反馈机制下如何设计互联网药品质量监管策略的问题，基于演化博弈理论，构建了政府部门、药品生产商、医药电商和患者参与的药品质量监管四方演化博弈模型，通过分析各博弈主体策略选择的稳定性，并基于Lyapunov第一法则对复制动态系统十六种均衡点进行稳定性分析，研究了促进药品生产商提供高质量药品的政府监管策略和患者反馈机制，并利用Matlab 2017仿真分析了各关键要素对策略演化的影响。研究结果表明：1）患者倾向于失真评价或投诉率较低时，医药电商更倾向于选择药品质量不检测，不利于互联网药品质量安全；2）患者失真评价下，不存在药品生产商提供高质量药品的稳定策略组合，而真实评价下有效的反馈机制和监管机制可使互联网药品质量安全具有稳定性；3）提高患者评价（正面评价或负面评价）带给医药电商和药品生产商的声誉价值增加或声誉损失，将会使药品生产商选择提供高质量药品做为稳定策略；4）降低患者失真评价和投诉维权行为的增加，均可增强药品生产商提供高质量药品的稳健性。最后，结合演化博弈模型和仿真分析结果，为完善药品质量监管机制提出了对策与建议。     

Innovation through tradition in the Italian coffee industry: an analysis of customers’ perceptions

The extant literature reveals how firms may innovate by exploiting past competencies and resources, hence proposing innovation through tradition as an emerging strategy to compete. Previous research largely demonstrates that the effectiveness of an innovation strategy is strictly dependent on the capability of firms to communicate the right message to their customers. Therefore, leveraging products’ attributes becomes fundamental to strategically position their commercial offerings in the minds of the target audience. Nevertheless, despite the well-known relevance of this issue, scant attention has been devoted to investigate the product attributes that consumer’s associate with innovation and with tradition when companies deploy strategies based on “innovation through tradition”. Accordingly, our study aims at covering this gap, by empirically analyzing the consumers’ perception of innovation and tradition in the Italian coffee industry through a positioning analysis. Our research allowed us to identify two sets of product attributes that consumers associate with innovation and tradition. The results show that in many cases the innovation-related and tradition-related attributes are strongly negatively correlated, but in some case the correlation is weak or close to zero. These attributes reveal that in some cases innovation and tradition can be combined in the perception of consumers, rather than representing opposite constructs. This result suggests that companies can effectively communicate the strategy of innovation through tradition to the consumers’ minds, but this must be done by choosing the right attributes.     

Dramatically reducing cycle times through flash development

The reduction of cycle time has emerged as a fundamental element of new product development strategy. Many companies look solely at speed enhancement and increase the human, capital and technical resources allocated to development projects. However, additional resources do not guarantee significant reductions in cycle time. As well as speed enhancement activities, there exist two other sets of activities that are key to shortening the development cycle: those that act to prevent delays (friction) in the development process and those that define the scope of the final outcome (direction). This paper describes flash development as an alternative approach to reducing product development cycle times. Flash development works by creating a process that focuses on speed, friction and direction. The process is illustrated through an analysis of the Galileo Project at Nortel Networks.     

Fitting Management Control Systems to Competitive Advantage

Recent publications suggest that existing management accounting and control systems prevent business unit managers realising their desired competitive advantage. Although the concept of competitive advantage has already been thoroughly discussed in strategy literature, it has not yet been integrated in the management accounting and management control frameworks. Only a limited number of researchers have concentrated on contingency research in this area. Contingency theory simply states that organization structure, process and management control systems are contingent upon various internal and external factors, such as industry, technology, size, culture and strategy (Anthony and Young, 1988; Anthony et al., 1992). This article is an attempt to identify and investigate the management control – strategy relationship. We report the results of our exploratory field research in 18 companies (32 business units). Based on our results, we formulate some hypotheses on the observed characteristics of the management control process in case of low-cost strategy, differentiation strategy in a standard product environment and differentiation strategy for customized products (make to order, engineer to order).     

Internationalizing managers: Speeding up the process

Most multinational companies agree that their managers need international expertise; but a recent survey surprisingly revealed that more than half of the large European corporations participating in the study lacked a strategy — either in writing or as a commonly articulated value — for internationalizing their managers (Price Waterhouse/Cranfield, 1991, p. 14). Not only must cutting-edge companies implement this process, but they have to find ways to speed it up to stay competitive.Brooklyn Derr and Gary Oddou report a 1991 survey conducted with 105 European multinationals employing an average of 30,000 workers each. The respondents, usually directors of human resource management and management development, identified the current strategies most frequently used to internationalize their firms, the importance assigned these strategies (not necessarily the same thing), and short-range trends. The article also explores the different challenges presented by attempting to internationalize senior managers as compared to junior managers.Expatriation/repatriation has been the traditional means of internationalizing managers, but companies are not doing a uniformly able job in preparing their managers for expatriation nor in taking advantage of their expertise after they return. In addition to making recommendations about expatriation/repatriation, the authors suggest newer, faster practices for internationalizing managers.     

Wisdom of the crowd and capabilities of a few: internal success factors of crowdsourcing for innovation

Crowdsourcing has been demonstrated to be an effective strategy to enhance the efficiency of a firm’s innovation process. In this paper, we focus on tournament-based crowdsourcing (also referred to as “broadcast search”), a method to solve technical problems in form of an open call for solutions to a large network of experts. Based on a longitudinal study of six companies piloting this application of crowdsourcing, we identify barriers and sources of resistance that hinder its implementation in firms. Our paper contributes to the state of research by analyzing crowdsourcing on the level of pilot projects, hence providing a workflow perspective that considers the creation of dedicated processes and operations of crowdsourcing. This project level analysis enables the identification of specific challenges managers face when implementing crowdsourcing within an established R&D organization. Following a design science approach, we derive suggestions for organizational interventions to overcome these barriers. We find that dedicated promoter roles strongly contribute to a successful implementation of crowdsourcing, turning pilot projects into an organizational routine.     

社会化媒体环境下的品牌传播及品牌形象差异——基于华为与海尔的比较研究

社会化媒体已成为企业品牌形象塑造的重要方式。本文以华为与海尔为研究对象，采用数据挖掘和社会网络分析方法对选取的26,503,570和3,277,717个微博用户数据进行品牌传播的过程研究，并选取两个典型事件分析信息扩散过程，然后通过高频词云图比较社会化媒体呈现的品牌形象与企业欲塑造的品牌形象之间的差异。结果显示：参与华为相关话题讨论的用户数量明显高于海尔，其传播声量亦较高；典型事件分析中，华为的“易烊千玺为nova全球代言人”得到了更多的用户关注，尤其是拥有大量粉丝账号的转发，迅速扩大了传播网络规模，而海尔的“搞笑抽奖活动”则更多的是用户直接转发、参与相关活动，拥有大量粉丝的账号参与较少；在品牌形象呈现方面，海尔的高频词云图中智慧、智能、生活直观展示出其欲塑造的品牌形象，而华为用户参与讨论的内容更为多样，但用户生成内容未能直观展示其欲塑造的品牌形象。     

Logistic Game™: learning by doing and knowledge-sharing

The aim of this article is to define a new simulation game in operation management called Logistic Game?. The main objectives are to introduce a new simulation game approach in solving the different correlated subsystems based on ‘visual interactive learning’ and to verify its positive effects on the learning process with respect to the usual simulation games. The game is based on an inside plant virtual supply chain simulation and copes with the educational challenges of teaching Industrial Logistics in a new, effective way. By applying a visual interactive simulation package, the game creates a virtual dynamic scenario directly visible by participants, with an improvement of experimentation and conceptualisation phases, and offers several logistic decisions and their strategic links from a holistic point of view. The challenge goes beyond a pure theoretical setting and students learn strategies and gain experience directly by operating in a virtual supply chain and sharing knowledge. The Logistic Game has been used to train more then 300 students since December 2006 in three different Italian workshops and has been designed to encourage the employment selection process by the companies involved.     

Information architecture for effective Workload Control: an insight from a successful implementation

The implementation of Workload Control (WLC), a Production Planning and Control concept uniquely designed for Make-To-Order companies, has been a constant challenge. Scholars argued that WLC is largely developed through simulations of well-defined environments while much more complex circumstances (e.g. information availability) have emerged in field research. A recent trend of WLC research is to improve the practical applicability of the concept, where empirical evidence is essential. However, success in WLC implementation remains impeded. The availability of data has been a significant area that frustrates the implementation process. While there is a tendency to simplify data requirements in recent WLC theory development, it is important to understand and maintain the information that is essential for the concept to be effective. For the first time in the field, this paper details the information architecture for WLC. Key informational entities of relevance to the input/output control functions in WLC as well as performance measurement are discussed based on evidence from a successful implementation. The paper not only sheds light for practitioners on how to construct an information system that facilitates successful WLC implementation but also has implications for future development of WLC mechanisms coping with information uncertainties in practice.     

International Digital Competence

This article evaluates which specific capabilities of a firm enable its internationalization process, with an emphasis on companies with exclusively digital products. The results provide an opportunity to examine the strength of earlier findings in International Entrepreneurship (IE) research, which has largely addressed high-tech ventures that export physical products. We reveal a set of intangible capabilities that are especially relevant to digital companies and their internationalization process, without foreign direct investment (FDI) or with limited outward assets characterized by non-equity entry modes. Using an inductive, multiple-case study methodology, we develop a new construct that we term ‘international digital competence’ (IDC). IDC consists of four capabilities critical to these companies: cross-cultural programming skills, global virtual networks, cross-border digital monetizing adaptability, and international business model reconfiguration. The possession of IDC enables digital companies to expand internationally through an online presence. Therefore, we propose that international online expansion can increase the likelihood of a digital company performing outward assets via non-equity entry modes. We also conceived that the digital company's strategy to achieve non-equity investments is moderated by its entrepreneur's international orientation.     

参与农产品区域公用品牌提升的三方演化博弈

农产品区域公用品牌建设在乡村振兴中发挥着重要作用,如何提升农产品区域公用品牌一直是各方关注的焦点。本文运用演化博弈方法,探讨了在提升农产品区域公用品牌过程中,不同场景下各参与主体如何进行策略选择,并用数值仿真对相关结论进行分析。研究结果表明：演化稳定策略受政府补贴力度、奖励、收益和成本的影响;合适的补贴力度有利于三方的共同参与,即农产品生产企业提升产品质量、品牌运营公司积极运营、地方政府严格监管;品牌运营公司给予企业的奖励应在一个合理的范围,同时上级政府增加对地方政府的奖励,也有利于三方共同的参与;降低参与成本和提升参与收益有利于激励农产品生产企业和品牌运营公司参与提升农产品区域公用品牌。     

Increasing the board's involvement in strategy

For a long time, boards of directors have been considered weak, incapable of contributing to the financial success of their companies. This article proposes a way to revitalize boards by involving them in mapping corporate strategic directions. Building on recent changes in boardroom practices, it outlines eight conditions for an effective strategic contribution by boards and specifies areas of potential for an effective strategic contribution by boards and specifies areas of potential interest to directors. Taken together, these suggestions are expected to ensure continuous and disciplined contribution by boards to strategy and, ultimately, to effective corporate performance.     

DRIVERS OF INTERNET PURCHASING SUCCESS

The development of the Internet as a business tool over the past 5 years has been phenomenal, causing a period of chaos and creative destruction. E‐commerce has been hyped as a catalyst for vast streamlining of the supply chain. Yet, in a time of such phenomenal change, the focus tends to be on the large picture. Many details of how a new technology should be or is employed tend to be unknown or ignored. However, as the technology matures and stabilizes, one of the primary factors that separate winners from losers is the way in which the technology is implemented and operated on a daily basis. This study examines the ways in which companies utilize the Internet to streamline their purchasing process. A survey of 416 customers of a major Internet retailer of commodity office supplies reveals important relationships between web site design, employee work environments, Internet strategy, and purchasing performance. Our sample of companies consists of firms that have ordered office supplies at least once using the Internet. Our data indicate that companies do realize performance benefits from utilizing the Internet as a purchasing tool. Furthermore, the data suggest factors that facilitate purchasing process improvements. These factors can be utilized by both buying and selling companies to improve their proprietary processes to maximize the benefits of e‐commerce as a purchasing tool.     

基于多AGENT系统的电力合约市场协商平台框架研究

提出了电力合约市场的实用化交易协商平台,由代表各自公司利益的智能体自动完成协商过程,该平台支持各智能体的自由协商。为满足该平台的实用化要求,进行了以下针对性设计:定义了智能体的协商策略,并设计了模糊控制遗传算法进行策略学习,使合约协商具有策略优化基础;针对合约市场协商的动态性和信息量大且不完全等特点,设计了灵活、鲁棒性强的可废止逻辑作为协商语言,并采用满足序列信息交换要求的POS语义作为智能体平台的通信协议。最后给出了智能体的设计实现思路。     

A framework for sustainable forest resource allocation: A Canadian case study

This paper addresses the problem of public-owned forest resource allocation observed in Canada. An integrated framework based on mill abilities to create value (expressed as economic, environmental and social benefits) is proposed. It encompasses three phases: (1) election of sustainable allocation criteria, (2) evaluation of mill performance with regard to the allocation criteria and (3) allocation of wood volumes according to mill performance. The framework is applied to a case study proposed by Ministry of Forests, Fauna and Parks (MFFP) in Québec. It is implemented as follows: first, the international standards, Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) and Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) are used to identify relevant allocation criteria covering the three sustainability dimensions (economy, environment and society). Second, the Group-Analytic Hierarchy Process (Group-AHP) is used to weight the allocation criteria and evaluate mill sustainability performance. Finally, optimization models are formulated to allocate the wood following two strategies: (1) maximizing the total created value by all mills and (2) promoting inter-firm fairness. The numerical results show that integrating sustainability concerns in the evaluation process has a significant impact on the allocation decisions. Moreover, adopting a wood allocation strategy seeking to guarantee fairness between forest companies is a win–win strategy as it also leads to maximizing the created value with a minimum deviation from the optimal targeted value. Lessons learned from this collaboration with MFFP are presented in order to help other interested researchers and public organizations develop their own roadmap to sustainable public resource allocation.     

Strategy implementation: A review and an introductory framework

Effective strategy implementation is a critical component of organizational success and a potential source of competitive advantage. However, despite many calls for increased attention, research on the subject remains a disparate constellation of recommendations, case studies, and empirical work that provides insight but lacks a cohesive framework. As a result, strategy research most often treats implementation as a black box and overlooks sources of performance heterogeneity derived from differences in strategy implementation effectiveness. To improve our understanding of the strategy implementation process, and to promote its inclusion in strategy research, the authors systematically review and synthesize findings in the extant strategy implementation literature to abductively derive an integrative framework comprised of three components: (1) actions through which managers influence the implementation process, (2) conditions necessary for strategy implementation effectiveness, and (3) the underlying dynamic managerial capabilities to create the best possible combination of conditions by enacting the most appropriate managerial actions. By explaining the relationships among these three components, we provide an introductory foundational framework on which to build future knowledge about this important field of inquiry.