Supply chain agility as an acclimatisation process to environmental uncertainty and organisational vulnerabilities: insights from British SMEs

Abstract

Even though supply chain agility (SCA) has been considered an essential concept in supply chain management (SCM) research, the way it is experienced and manifested, especially by small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), has received much less attention. Our purpose is to focus on SME organisational vulnerabilities in the context of increased environmental uncertainty, and explore how SCA is developed and applied by SMEs amid their vulnerabilities. By relying on insights from comparative case studies of three British SMEs, we examine SME SCA as an acclimatisation process and delve into SMEs’ experiences of facing environmental uncertainty while developing and applying SCA. Our findings highlight that organisational attitudes underlie how SMEs perceive environmental uncertainty, tackle organisational vulnerabilities and develop SCA as an acclimatisation process. Our findings also reveal that resource constraints, supply chain relationships, interorganisational power dynamics, and access to information play important roles in developing SCA.     

关注利益相关者与实现民营外贸企业成功转型的关系研究

入世后,我国民营外贸企业得到了迅猛的发展,目前已基本完成了"量"的积累,进入了全面转型和提升"质"的阶段。民营外贸企业要突破当前的发展困境,必须关注企业的内外部利益相关者,只有得到他们的充分理解与大力支持,才能成功实现企业的转型。     

Did small and medium enterprises maintain better jobs during the early years of the recession? Job quality multidimensional evidence from Spain

While the literature has indeed confirmed a general tendency linking small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to a dynamic of greater job creation, there is little available evidence on what has happened to job quality since the financial crisis. Through a representative sample of 5311 employees in 2008 (first year of job destruction) and 4925 employees in 2010 (last year for which data were available), and using a two-stage structural equation model, this article empirically analyses the multidimensional determinants of job quality, by enterprise-size class, in Spain. The research has revealed three main results. First, job quality in Spain improved in all enterprises, regardless of their size, during the early years of the recession. Second, the greatest improvements were found in SMEs. Although job quality was already better in SMEs than in large enterprises in 2008, the differences between them subsequently widened. Third, this accelerated divergence was explained by the following dimensions: working conditions, work intensity, health and safety at work, and work–life balance. These dimensions were much more positive in SMEs. Employment-related public policy should therefore focus more specifically on SMEs. There are two reasons for this. First, despite the recession, SMEs have shown themselves to be key factors in the explanation of job quality. Second, by making changes to their value generation model, they could continue to drive the creation of better quality jobs.     

Optimal cut-off for rare events and unbalanced misclassification costs

This paper develops a method for handling two-class classification problems with highly unbalanced class sizes and misclassification costs. When the class sizes are highly unbalanced and the minority class represents a rare event, conventional classification methods tend to strongly favour the majority class, resulting in very low detection of the minority class. A method is proposed to determine the optimal cut-off for asymmetric misclassification costs and for unbalanced class sizes. Monte Carlo simulations show that this proposal performs better than the method based on the notion of classification accuracy. Finally, the proposed method is applied to empirical data on Italian small and medium enterprises to classify them into default and non-default groups.     

农业产业化龙头企业可持续发展战略研究——基于郑州市农业龙头企业发展的分析

农业产业化龙头企业发展到现在,迫切需要建立起自己的发展战略体系,以指导企业未来的经营与发展,使企业更好地适应越来越严峻的竞争形势。通过对郑州市农业龙头企业可持续发展问题的分析,提出我国农业产业化龙头企业可持续发展的战略。     

苏北民营企业发展竞争力研究

企业的竞争力是企业生存与发展的基础，面对国内外日益激烈的市场竞争，要想在竞争中立于不败之地，民营企业就必须注重提升企业竞争力。在比较苏南、苏北民营企业竞争力的基础上，从产权结构与治理结构、创新能力、人才资源、市场结构、运营成本等方面分析了苏北民营企业竞争力的制约因素，提出了提升苏北民营企业竞争力的对策。     

Managing Quality in a Heterogeneous Contract Manufacturing Environment

The outsourcing of production is a prominent strategy across industries. While the strategy can have many benefits, the popular press reports numerous examples of quality issues originating with contract manufacturers (CMs). Observing these quality issues, multiple scholars call for the quality management (QM) literature to be extended to explicitly address the challenges of managing quality in an inter‐organizational context. Additionally, QM researchers recognize the need to consider contextual contingencies for the effectiveness of specific QM practices. Responding to these calls, we focus on the potential contingent factor of CM heterogeneity (i.e. the degree of product and process diversity at the CM plant). We first test the direct relationship between CM manufacturing heterogeneity and CM quality conformance performance, as reported by the CM's customers, brand‐owning firms. Next, we evaluate the effectiveness of multiple practices that these brand‐owning firms can employ to mitigate the anticipated negative effect of heterogeneity on their CM's conformance quality. We utilize paired dyadic data on 106 contract manufacturing relationships in the food, drug, and medical device industries to test our hypothesized model. The results of our analysis reveal a negative association between heterogeneity at CM facilities and their conformance quality performance. Our results also identify cooperative relationships, contractual coordination provisions, and formal performance assessment programs as practices that brand‐owning firms can employ to largely eliminate the negative impact of heterogeneity on CMs’ conformance quality performance.     

中国制造业产业生命周期研究———基于１９９３—２０１４年数据的分析

中国制造业面临着日益严峻的资源和环境约束,制造业产业如何在转型升级、创新驱动中合理定位和选择发展道路尤为重要。通过中国制造业产业生命周期分析,明确制造业产业发展阶段,可以有效制定相关政策予以促进或抑制。因此,运用产出增长率法、产业生长曲线法、综合指标分析法等方法,基于１９９３—２０１４年的制造业产业数据展开实证检验。结果发现,基于３种不同方法所得结论基本一致：１／３的制造业产业仍然处于快速成长阶段,但半数制造业产业已经处于成熟期,少数则处于衰退期。针对处于不同生命周期阶段的产业,可分别采取创新发展、转移产能等策略。     

FDI 对安徽省装备制造业发展的影响分析

外商直接投资（FDI）在拓宽国内资金需求渠道的同时,具有较强的技术溢出效应,迎合了装备制造业资本和技术密集的双重特征。当前,安徽省装备制造业处在资本密集型占主导的发展阶段,对 FDI的偏好性较强。研究表明,安徽省装备制造业与FDI间具有较强的相关性,FDI能够有效促进安徽省装备制造业发展,但安徽省装备制造业对FDI的吸引力较弱,且各具体行业对 FDI依赖程度存在较大差异。据此提出相应的建议,一方面,安徽省应注重装备制造业转型升级,提升行业整体竞争力;另一方面,要优化投资环境,增强安徽省装备制造业对FDI的引致能力。     

新工业革命下我国制造业发展路径分析

探讨新工业革命下我国制造业转型升级的路径。阐述我国制造业的现状,分析新工业革命给我国制造业发展带来的挑战和机遇,提出我国制造业战略转型升级的新思路:以两化融合为契机,加大制造业人力资本投入,加强核心技术研发,完善制造业公共创新服务体系并进一步构建新型政策扶持机制,推进科技成果转化。