Recent years witnessed a gradual change on how to evaluate successful procurement, in both the private ad the public sector. Indeed from a price-only criterion for measuring success, decisions shifted to a multi-criteria approach where various dimensions of quality, as well as price, are...

Ever since Porter’s book Competitive Strategy (1980), developing a generic strategy and then executing this strategy well has been seen as the main source of competitive advantage for organizations. However, since the publication of Porter’s book the business environment has changed...

The temporary staffing industry functions as an economic thermometer: when the industry is suffering decreasing turnover this is a clear sign the economy is cooling down and vice versa. As a consequence the industry experiences erratic financial results and has traditionally suffered from a huge...

The internal resource barriers that firms experience influence their capability to export. This in turn influences the export performance of the country and the extent to which exports contribute to economic growth. The aim of this paper is to analyse the impact of resource barriers, more...

Industrial policy (IP) can make an important contribution to both environmental and social sustainability. The purpose of this paper is to explore the new rationale for IP due to climate change and to determine its implications for the how of industrial policy. Five implications are discussed,...

We know that entrepreneurs – at least those driven by opportunities – can contribute to economic growth, productivity improvements and competitiveness in national economies.. But do they contribute to happiness on the country level? In other words, does the happiness of nations depend on its...

The outsourcing of the R&D function is an emerging practice of corporate firms. In their attempt to reduce the increasing cost of research and technology development, firms are strategically outsourcing the R&D function or repositioning their internal R&D organisation. By doing so, they are able...

The recent economic downturn has caused tremendous upheaval in the business world and it has spurred many companies to engage in self-analysis and organisational improvement activities. As a result, interest in the determinant factors of sustainable high performance is increasing. Managers all...

Value chain promotion is considered a key element of private sector development strategies and pro-poor growth. However, (value) chain concepts are rather complex and unclear. this paper unravels the concept of global value chains and studies the diversity of key value chain-related (supply...