Guest editorial

Citation

Pieter van Donk, D. and van der Vaart, T. (2010), "Guest editorial", International Journal of Operations & Production Management, Vol. 30 No. 12. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijopm.2010.02430laa.001

Guest editorial

Article Type: Guest editorial From: International Journal of Operations & Production Management, Volume 30, Issue 12

About the Guest Editors

Dirk Pieter van Donk Associate Professor in Operations Management at the Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Groningen, The Netherlands. He holds a PhD in Management from the University of Groningen. His research interests are supply chain management and integration, operations management in process industries and specifically food processing industries. He has published in leading international journals, such as Journal of Operations Management, International Journal of Operations & Production Management, International Journal of Production Research, and International Journal of Production Economics. He is currently member of the board of EurOMA.

Taco van der VaartAssociate Professor of Operations Management at the Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Groningen, The Netherlands. He holds a PhD in Operations Management from the University of Groningen. His research has been published in leading international journals, including the International Journal of Operations & Production Management, International Journal of Production Research, and the Journal of Organizational Behavior. Taco van der Vaart is a researcher in the area of supply chain management and more recently in the area of health care operations. He is a member of POMS and EurOMA and actively involved in the IMSS network.

The 15th Annual International Conference of the European Operations Management Association took place in Groningen, The Netherlands, in June 2008, with the theme “Tradition and Innovation in Operations Management: connecting Past and Future”. This theme reflected the many challenges and new applications the field of operations management (OM) is facing and the changes required in the globally competitive world. As new developments and trends emerge, our field responds and adapts to meet these external demands. At the same time, we continue to struggle to find and define universal laws of OM. Sometimes, it seems that the OM community does not consider most of the traditional facts and knowledge to be applicable in the present and the future. The conference aimed to assess and evaluate current knowledge in OM, and to examine how we can use traditional wisdom in OM in order to be prepared for the challenges that will have to be met in the future.

During the conference 241 papers were presented. All authors were eligible to apply for the Chris Voss Best Paper Award. From the 109 papers applying, a jury made an initial selection of 19 papers which were considered as candidates for the award. As editors of this special issue, we invited the authors of this initial selection to submit a full paper. As a result, 13 papers were submitted. After several rounds of review, we ended up with four papers for this special issue. They represent current research in the OM field and also reflect upon the theme of the conference.

The paper by Giovani J.C. da Silveira and Rui S. Sousa tests relationships between performance improvements and the three classical manufacturing strategy paradigms of fit, best practices, and capabilities defined by Voss (1995). This paper brings a well-developed domain and theme (manufacturing strategy) back to our attention. The results indicate that capability learning and best practices are positively related to performance improvements in quality, flexibility, and dependability, whereas internal fit appears to be negatively related to flexibility improvements. The study reinforces the need for research to explore the nature and role of the three paradigms jointly rather than in isolation.

The paper by Amrou Awaysheh and Robert D. Klassen explores the integration of social issues in the management of supply chains from an OM perspective. As such it adds an innovative component to the well-investigated area of supply chain management: the increasingly important area of social responsibility. The paper clearly extends the boundaries of traditional OM. Relying on survey data, the paper finds four dimensions of supplier socially responsible practices: supplier human rights; supplier labour practices; supplier codes of conduct; and supplier social audits, that can be related to three dimensions of supply chain structure, namely transparency, dependency, and distance.

Eamonn Ambrose, Donna Marshall, and Daniel Lynch specifically address the conference theme. The paper is innovative in measuring a number of supply chain concepts at both the supplier and the buyer side of a relationship, while using traditional constructs. The paper compares how buyers and suppliers perceive relationship mechanisms. It explains the antecedents and dynamics of relationship performance by comparing buyer and supplier perceptions of the same relationships. Within the study the focus is on the issue of relationship success and the hypothesis is tested that the antecedents of perceived relationship success for buyers differ from those of suppliers within supply chain relationships.

The paper by Alistair Brandon-Jones and Rhian Silvestro specifically pays attention to service industries, an area that is becoming increasingly important and also an area that is challenged by numerous innovations. The paper builds upon the more or less traditional debate in the service quality literature regarding the measurement of internal service quality by either the gap-based or perceptions-only approach. The empirical context of this paper is centered around an innovative internal service: the provision of e-procurement software, training, and user support. Data are gathered in four organizations. The two approaches are evaluated in terms of reliability and validity, and in terms of the pragmatic aspects of survey administration. The study generates some understanding of the internal service context in which the two approaches might be appropriate. This paper perfectly illustrates that older concepts can be valuable in assessing the value of innovative instruments and tools.

We would like to acknowledge the contribution and efforts of a number of people. We would like to thank the co-organizers of the conference: Gera Welker, Wout van Wezel, and Jacob Wijngaard for their efforts in realizing the conference. We would like to thank the other members of the jury for the Chris Voss best Paper Award for the initial selection of the papers: Raffaella Cagliano, Andrew Taylor, and Chris Voss. We would like to thank the editors of the International Journal of Operations & Production Management Margaret and Andrew Taylor for their support, cautious remarks, and suggestions during our work as guest editors. We also would like to thank the following reviewers for their help in compiling this special issue (in alphabetic order): Pär Åhlström, Kate Blackmon, Harry Boer, Raffaella Cagliano, Paul Childerhouse, Cipriano Forza, Brian Fynes, Christina Giménez, Jan Holmström, Matthias Holweg, David Johnston, Matteo Kalchschmidt, Murat Kristal, Rudolph Large, Bjørge Laugen, Mike Lewis, Veronica Martinez, Kepa Mendibil, Ram Narasimhan, Guido Nassimbeni, Steve New, Jan Olhager, Mark Pagell, Carol Prahinski, Stefan Seuring, Wendy van der Valk, and Gyula Vastag.

Dirk Pieter van Donk, Taco van der VaartGuest Editors