Purpose – Ownership change has been an overlooked contingency factor in past plant level practice-performance studies. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of ownership changes to practice-performance dynamics by longitudinally following the same 23 manufacturing sites...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to study how, in recent decades, manufacturing sites have reacted to changes in their business environment by developing their management practices. This also makes it possible to predict the behavior and lifecycles of the new practices adopted by...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the possibilities and pitfalls of longitudinal studies in the field of operations management (OM). Design/methodology/approach – A longitudinal study conducted in Finland was analyzed from the methodological point of view. In the theoretical...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyze changes in the supply chain and production process, and the effects these changes have had on competitive performance. Design/methodology/approach – The study is longitudinal and was conducted in 1993, 2004 and 2010 with a standard...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the use and effect of benchmarking in manufacturing companies. Design/methodology/approach – A total of 23 companies were interviewed longitudinally in 1993, 2004 and 2010. For the study a standard questionnaire was used, and the questions...