Review the Operational Excellence Factors of Service Firms: A Literature Review

Operational excellence is considered as a competitive weapon for firms, both in service and manufacturing. Firms should therefore carefully study their operation strategy choices due to the high impact that results from applying operation strategy decisions on operational excellence. There are many factors that can lead to operational excellence, including leadership, human resource management practices, operations strategy, and involvement culture, and these will be the focus of this work. This research reviews the literature related to operations and excellence in service firms. Moreover, it investigates the factors that affect the operational excellence of service sector.  In the literature, operational excellence for the service sector is still ambiguous. This research is an attempt to take advantage of the developments made in the industrial field, while at the same time drawing together different factors that have been studied separately in the past. We propose a theoretical framework that investigates some factors that affect operational excellence. Therefore, we propose implementing our theoretical model in the service sector, amongst others. Moreover, we suggest a further investigation on the obstacles may face the firms to reach operational excellence.

A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF PRODUCT INNOVATION IN JORDAN’S PHARMACEUTICAL SECTOR

Product Innovation, especially New Product Development (NPD) is critical for the continued success, development, and long-term growth of a company. Despite extensive research on how to achieve NPD success, NPD process remains a difficult and a highly risky venture. The research was conducted to investigate factors that affect NPD in the Jordanian pharmaceutical sector. Five factors were conceptually identified from past literature as initial factors. They include senior management support (SMS), cross-functional teams (CFT), customer involvement (CI), supplier integration (SI), and time to market (TTM). These five factors were used to build the basic research model as independent variables; whereas NPD was the dependent variable for the research model. A qualitative research methodology was designed and used to achieve the research objectives. The needed data for this study was captured through personal interviews, and a survey that targeted all Jordanian pharmaceutical companies. The population from which respondents was chosen included research and development managers, marketing managers, and other personnel involved in NPD process in Jordanian pharmaceutical producing companies. Through conducting a number of personal interviews and using Content Analytical Technique (CAT) for data analysis, the results of the research show the existence of a number of factors that affect NPD process in Jordanian pharmaceutical sector such as: SMS, TTM, CFT, R&R, Knowledge, and Technology. In addition, a number of factors were identified as NPD challenges and constraints. These factors include the toughness and lack of clarity in R&R related to NPD process, the lack of financial and human resources, as well as addition to increasing DC. This paper suggests several recommendations. Firstly, senior managements need to provide enough support to NPD process whether as financial, moral or any other kind of support. Secondly, companies have to take the necessary actions to speed up NPD process in order to get the benefits of introducing products earlier into the market. Thirdly, companies have to work hard to ensure higher levels of knowledge among their staff, especially those who are involved in NPD process by providing continued periodic training to them

A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF PRODUCT INNOVATION IN JORDAN’S PHARMACEUTICAL SECTOR

Product Innovation, especially New Product Development (NPD) is critical for the continued success, development, and long-term growth of a company. Despite extensive research on how to achieve NPD success, NPD process remains a difficult and a highly risky venture. The research was conducted to investigate factors that affect NPD in the Jordanian pharmaceutical sector. Five factors were conceptually identified from past literature as initial factors. They include senior management support (SMS), cross-functional teams (CFT), customer involvement (CI), supplier integration (SI), and time to market (TTM). These five factors were used to build the basic research model as independent variables; whereas NPD was the dependent variable for the research model. A qualitative research methodology was designed and used to achieve the research objectives. The needed data for this study was captured through personal interviews, and a survey that targeted all Jordanian pharmaceutical companies. The population from which respondents was chosen included research and development managers, marketing managers, and other personnel involved in NPD process in Jordanian pharmaceutical producing companies. Through conducting a number of personal interviews and using Content Analytical Technique (CAT) for data analysis, the results of the research show the existence of a number of factors that affect NPD process in Jordanian pharmaceutical sector such as: SMS, TTM, CFT, R&R, Knowledge, and Technology. In addition, a number of factors were identified as NPD challenges and constraints. These factors include the toughness and lack of clarity in R&R related to NPD process, the lack of financial and human resources, as well as addition to increasing DC. This paper suggests several recommendations. Firstly, senior managements need to provide enough support to NPD process whether as financial, moral or any other kind of support. Secondly, companies have to take the necessary actions to speed up NPD process in order to get the benefits of introducing products earlier into the market. Thirdly, companies have to work hard to ensure higher levels of knowledge among their staff, especially those who are involved in NPD process by providing continued periodic training to them

Green entrepreneurial orientation for enhancing SMEs financial and environmental performance: Synergetic moderation of green technology dynamism and knowledge transfer and integration

AbstractCurrently SMEs in the developing countries like Pakistan are struggling for their survival, however, because of increasing consumer awareness, SMEs have to focus over the environmental concerns as well. For SMEs green entrepreneurial orientation is taking significant importance. Moreover, based on the catalytic effects of green technology dynamism and knowledge transfer and integration, this study evaluated their moderating roles over the relationship between green entrepreneurial orientation and two performance measures which are environmental performance and financial performance. For the said purpose, the data has been collected from 384 SMEs operating in Pakistan involved in green practices, using simple random sampling. The results drawn from structural equation modelling revealed that green entrepreneurial orientation has a significant impact over environmental as well as financial performance, moreover, the moderating role of green technology dynamism as well as knowledge transfer and integration are also significant. The overall model has been validated and the blindfolding technique confirmed the predictive validity of the model as well. The research contributed to the body of knowledge by adding to the dynamic capability theory and guided the importance of green practices to the practitioners as well as policy makers