Lean operating principles are based on the systems of Toyota Japan. Companies around the world, in all sectors of the economy, now embrace these approaches to improve quality, cost and productivity. Different purchasing and sourcing practices in lean organisations mean that winning sales from...

The Internet has become one of the most competitive retail marketplaces. Companies operating in this area face demanding customers intolerant of any service failure and a large number of competitors. A key issue in how companies can serve this market is the way in which they internally manage...

Collaboration between marketing and operational areas is critical to business success. Despite this, in practice most companies suffer hostile and adversarial relationships between these functions. Existing research has not sufficiently addressed methods for improving this situation outside of...

Many retailers have expanded their businesses by adding Internet sales channels. There are many advantages of such multi-channel business operation, however, these may be offset by an overlooked negative consequence of cross-channel shopper activity - poor service online may lead customers to...

Operations management is a key function in the modern organisation and an important area of study in the business school. Like many subjects it remains separated from the business history community. The practice of operations management can gain meaningful and significant lessons from proper...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the coverage of identified topics that represent three key themes of change in management practice. These themes, focused on the new interconnected modern business operation, consist of: cross‐functional or process‐based working, supply...

Purpose – Service businesses are struggling with customer demands for better quality service and managerial demands for cost reduction. There is evidence to suggest that service businesses are in practice failing on both these counts, seeing increased costs and reductions in service quality....

Purpose – The aim of this review and of the papers in this special issue is to critically examine different approaches to teaching operations management (OM) in order to provoke and stimulate educators within the discipline. Design/methodology/approach – The papers within this special issue...

Purpose – This paper aims to examine the preferences of students towards different teaching methods and the perceived effectiveness of experiential teaching methods in different operations management (OM) modules. Design/methodology/approach – Student perceptions of different teaching...

Purpose – The adoption of lean operational practices and independently the uptake of business practices related to sustainability and corporate social responsibility continues to grow. Past research has hinted at relationships between these two areas – suggesting that “lean is green”...