Alternative uses of temporary work and new forms of work organisation

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between the use of temporary workers and the adoption of new forms of work organisation (NFWO) in production. This study aims to understand to what extent these two forms of human resources flexibility are synergic or mutually exclusive. In order to answer this main goal, we discuss different levels of temporary workers adoption in relation to different levels of use of NFWO, the level of integration of temporary workers within the overall production organisation and the joint and synergistic use of NFWO and temporary work. Evidence drawn from seven case studies in manufacturing plants in northern Italy is provided. Results highlight that, according to the characteristics of the production process, temporary workers and NFWO are not mutually exclusive, that temporary workers can be integrated with other workers in the shop floor, and that NFWO can also be adopted for temporary workers. In addition, NFWO has been proven to be a key enabler to integrate temporary workers within the organisation, thus showing an important synergistic effect between the two human resource flexibility practices

The impact of country culture on the adoption of new forms of work organization

Purpose – This paper aims at understanding the relationship between the adoption of new forms of work organizations (NFWOs) and measures of country impact, in terms of national culture and economic development. Design/methodology/approach – The adoption of NFWO practices is measured through data from the fourth edition of the International Manufacturing Strategy Survey, while Hofstede’s measures are adopted for national culture, and gross national income (GNI) per capita is used as an economic development variable. Multivariate linear regression is applied to investigate relationships, using company size as a control variable. A cluster analysis is utilized to identify groups of countries with similar cultural characteristics and to highlight different patterns of adoption of NFWO practices. Findings – The authors show that it is possible to explain different patterns in the adoption of NFWO practices when considering company size and cultural variables. GNI is instead only significant for some practices and does not always positively influence the adoption of NFWO. On the other hand, cultural variables are linked to all the practices, but there is no dominant dimension to explain higher or lower NFWO adoption. Research limitations/implications – Results are limited because only Hofstede’s cultural variables are used and manufacturing performance is not considered. Therefore, it is not possible to discriminate between more or less successful NFWO variations. Practical implications – This paper provides managers with insights on how to take into account cultural variables when transferring organizational models to different countries. Originality/value – This paper contributes to previous studies showing the importance of including several contextual variables, country impact in particular, in the study of operations management

The moderating effect of product complexity on new product development and supply chain management integration

The purpose of this paper is to explore whether product complexity moderates the impact of integration programs in both new product development (NPD) and supply chain (SC) management on operational performance. Results are based on statistical analyses of data collected from an international sample of manufacturing firms through the last edition of the International Manufacturing Strategy Survey (IMSS 5). The main findings are that NPD and SC integration do have an impact on performance, while product complexity alone has not. When considering the moderating effect, complexity has no impact on NPD integration, while there is some impact on SC integration

The impact of aggregation level on forecasting performance

Most operations decisions are based on some kind of forecast of future demand. Thus, forecasting is definitely a very traditional area in the operations and inventory management literature. While literature concerning forecast explores the adoption ofvarious qualitative and quantitative methods, this paper tries to design new solutions to improve forecasting accuracy by focusing on the forecasting process that uses such algorithms. In particular, when forecasting demand one should always make clear exactly what he/she is trying to forecast, in terms of the time bucket (i.e., the period oftime over which demand is aggregated), the forecasting horizon, the set ofitems the demand refers to (e.g., forecasting demand for a single item can be much harder than forecasting demand for a group of items), the set of locations the demand refers to (e.g., demand at the single store level is much less predictable than the demand for a whole chain ofstores). Traditionally, these features ofthe final output off orecasting also influence the forecasting process. Indeed, when one wants to forecast demand at single store single item single day level it seems natural to analyse demand and causal factors at the same level of aggregation. On the contrary, in this paper we aim at showing that, first of all often aggregating and/or disaggregating data in the forecasting process can lead to substantial improvements; second, the choice ofthe appropriate level ofaggregation depends on the underlying demand generation process. In addition, most forecasting algorithms tend to focus on a single demand variable. On the contrary, we can analyse analogous time series to improve the effectiveness of the forecasting process. Clustering techniques can be used to identify such homologous time series. Such clusters of homologous time series can provide, on the one hand, the sample size required to gain good statistical confidence and, on the other hand, relatively homogeneous data. In the paper, we use sales data from a food retailer at a very detailed level to test our hypotheses. This claims for relevance for both practitioners and researchers

A New Research Agenda for Luxury Supply Chain Management?

The relevance of luxury industry is still increasing at double digit from an economic perspective at the global level; whereas this dramatic increase is not followed by a comparable improvement of research about Luxury Supply Chain Management. This paper aims at presenting some papers as well as some examples from key luxury case studies, with the purpose of addressing a new research agenda for Luxury Supply Chain Management. And Supply Management, Demand Management, Contract Management, Variety Management, and Sustainability are areas of research that are still under-explored, although the incredible potential high relevance for luxury Critical Success Factors