Knowledge that Transforms

This study assesses internal drivers of a firm's level of environmental awareness, including methods for incorporating environmental objectives into the strategic planning of operations, communication of objectives throughout the organization, and deployment of accountability to operating personnel and managers for environmental performance. Challenges firms may encounter in motivating and holding employees and process owners accountable for environmental performance are discussed, as well as a potential for inconsistencies between management's espoused theories and theories in use. A case study of a steel manufacturer is used to determine how accountability for and awareness of environmental objectives can be operationally implemented.

After several years of use of electronic data interchange (EDI) in various industries, the literature is still inconclusive regarding the benefits gained from its usage. We investigated contextual factors of two types: non‐managerial (product diversity, product customization, production instability, and organizational size) and managerial (just‐in‐time and quality management), that might have confounded past results. Our results indicate that the extent of EDI use is significantly related to delivery performance after controlling for the above‐mentioned factors. Furthermore, the data set supported the moderating effect of production instability on the relationship between the extent of EDI use and delivery performance achieved, but failed to support the moderating effect of organizational size.

Prior literature has examined product quality and service quality separately as antecedents of customer loyalty. In the context of the automotive industry, we present a framework that examines the simultaneous impact of product and service quality on consumers' purchase intentions. The framework is operationalized as several hypotheses that posit relationships between service quality, service satisfaction, product quality, and customer loyalty. The hypotheses are tested using three sources of data: (i) archival data on product quality and customer purchases, (ii) consumersíresponses to a survey instrument, and (iii) Consumer Reports. Results indicate general support for main hypotheses proposed.

This article describes the first fully integrated material planning system to facilitate the management of a remanufacturing facility. A number of firms are already engaged in this activity. They remanufacture automobile, truck, and other vehicle components, like starters, alternators, transmissions, and so forth. These firms take in used components, disassemble them, and assemble saleable products from the good parts they find. There is considerable uncertainty in the supply of used components, the good parts in those components, and the demand for remanufactured products. Our system is based on material requirements planning logic, something that many firms in the industry are already familiar with. Meetings with experts in the industry were used to set the parameters of the system and evaluate its approach.

As customers, the public and other stakeholders are increasingly demanding that manufacturing firms improve their approach to environmental management, some plants have moved to develop an orientation that is increasingly proactive. Synthesizing earlier research, environmental management orientation is defined here to include system analysis and planning, organizational responsibility, and management controls. The relationship between a proactive orientation and two sets of internal factors, specifically the personal views of plant managers and plant‐specific characteristics, was tested using survey data from the furniture industry. The production outlook for the plant was critical, with a favorable outlook fostering a more proactive environmental management orientation. After controlling for plant‐specific factors, personal views also were influential; an increasing emphasis on short‐term economic value was related to a more reactive plant‐level orientation. Thus senior corporate management can foster strong plant‐level environmental management through a more balanced emphasis on economic and ethical values and continued investment in a plant's long‐term viability.

Quality management has often been advocated as being universally applicable to organizations. This is in contrast with the manufacturing strategy contingency approach of Operations Management that advocates internal and external consistency between manufacturing strategy choices. This article empirically investigates whether quality management practices are contingent on a plant's manufacturing strategy context, by examining the use of process quality management practices—a critical and distinctive subset of the whole set of quality management practices—across plants representative of different manufacturing strategy contexts. The study strongly suggests that process quality management practices are contingent on a plant's manufacturing strategy, and identifies mechanisms by which this takes place.

This paper integrates a stakeholder perspective into the resource‐based view of the firm, to analyze the mechanisms that link the adoption of the international Environmental Management Standard ISO 14001 to firms' competitive advantage. This paper shows that the perceived competitiveness impact of the standard depends mostly on the involvement of firms' external stakeholders (distributors, customers, community members, and regulatory agencies) in its design. ISO 14001 is a process standard, and it is difficult for stakeholders to get credible information on the effectiveness of the standard if they are not involved in its design. Stakeholders' involvement in a firm's ISO 14001 standard becomes a valuable organizational capability, which is difficult to imitate by competitors. The analysis is supported by primary data collected from a questionnaire mailed to 152 firms, resulting in 55 observations representing 30% of the total number of firms certified in the U.S. in August 1998.

The ISO 9000 series of quality management systems standards and the more recent ISO 14000 environmental management systems standards have generated much controversy among practitioners. Although ISO 9000 has become a de facto requirement for many firms, its effects are poorly understood, and similarly the value and domain of applicability of ISO 14000 have been questioned. This paper reports on an exploratory study into the global spread of ISO 14000. We interviewed practitioners worldwide to identify factors that they believe explain differences between national ISO 14000 certification counts. We then collected quantititive data for these factors and, using regression analysis, we found that exports, environmental attitudes (combined with economic development), and ISO 9000 certification count were significant. The fact that ISO 9000 appears as an important factor explaining diffusion of ISO 14000 certifications suggests that the drivers behind the two have significant overlap. This indicates that, although ISO 14000 is an environmental standard, many of the factors driving national certification patterns are not at all environmental in nature, and that ISO 14000 therefore needs to be studied from a broader perspective than from a purely environmental point of view.

We present a two‐period model of remanufacturing in the face of competition. In our model, an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) competes with a local remanufacturer (L) under many reverse logistics configurations for the returned items. After establishing the Nash Equilibrium in the second period sub‐game, we use numerical experiments for comparative statics. OEM wants to increase L'S remanufacturing cost. Surprisingly, while L competes in the sales market, she has incentives to reduce oem's remanufacturing cost. A social planner who wants to increase remanufacturing can give incentives to the OEM to increase the fraction available for remanufacturing, or reduce his remanufacturing costs.