Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to clarify the different roles of intra- and inter-organizational information and communication technology (ICT) in improving supply chain performance. It proposes different mechanisms to explain how intra- and inter-organizational ICT interact with...

Purpose – Hospitals struggle to integrate the planning from different departments; resulting in unacceptable waiting times for patients. The literature mainly addresses general, organizational factors inhibiting or enabling integration and omits important factors stemming from the care...

Purpose – The aim of this paper is to investigate which integrative planning and control practices are used in hospitals and what their effects are on patient flow. Design/methodology/approach – The study is based on a three‐hospital multi‐case study carried out in The Netherlands. The...

Quality management ignores organizational culture to a great extent. Establishes the relationship between organizational culture and quality management and presents a method for measuring organizational culture, illustrating the relationship in a case study. Gives recommendations for using the...

Purpose – Buyer‐focused operations aim at a high level of supply chain alignment by singling out resources for one buyer in order to serve this buyer optimally. The purpose of this paper is to identify what business characteristics make suppliers choose buyer‐focused operations as a supply...

Purpose – The concept of buyer focus has recently been introduced as a new supply chain strategy, although the design and operation of buyer‐focused cells have hardly been investigated. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how buyer‐focused cells realise responsiveness....

Purpose – The objective of this paper is to gain a better understanding of the impact of context on the adoption of e‐commerce in supply chains. Design/methodology/approach – A literature review, 45 semi‐structured interviews in four different supply chains in the UK healthcare sector,...

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to analyse the extent of the integration between manufacturers and third party logistics (TPL) providers at present and how the integration is expected to develop in the near future. The focus is on studying what tasks are part of the cooperation, what...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of three different dimensions of customer‐induced uncertainty and task uncertainty on the mix of physicians' coordination practices. Design/methodology/approach – An improvement and research project are combined resulting in...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effectiveness of supply chain integration in different contexts. More specifically, it aims to show that supply chain integration is only effective in buyer‐supplier relationships characterised by high supply complexity....