This paper presents a comparative study of the New Product Development (NPD) environment and practices between American and British firms. Our analysis is based on an in-depth survey of 63 British and 37 American firms. The selected firms represent key industrial sectors of computer,...

Recent advances in systems theory have significantly raised its utility for supporting problem-structuring activity in organizations. However, this approach has been inadequately developed for representing and evaluating the nature and outcomes of organizational functioning. Toward that end this...

The expansion of Japanese FDI into the UK manufacturing sector during the 1980s and early 1990s gave rise to the debate on the Japanization of British industry. The paper argues that this debate was constructed from a Western perspective. It did not locate the strategies and structures of...

Most academic research into segmentation in the financial services industry has focused on alternative analytical approaches and base variables; relatively little attention has been paid to implementation issues, despite management's concerns about the practicality and usefulness of...

A consultancy project to develop an information systems (IS) strategy for a copper mine located in South Africa is described. The mine is operated by the UK based mining company RTZ, the world's largest mining company. The approach taken was based on an earlier project at Sainsbury's, a major...

The paper reviews the prospects of OR applied by dispersed practitioners, small providers of OR services, academics and OR consultants in other words OR applied by those not located inside internal OR groups. Many in the UK have regarded the activities of OR groups as the defining practice of...

A significant issue that is increasingly affecting the operations of companies is the policies of governments with regard to the natural environment and the activities of nongovernmental organizations in promoting codes of practice and other forms of nonlegal regulation.(1) The onset of new...

In recent years the re-engineering of R&D functions in large multinationals has often been accompanied by the emergence of groupware applications as strategic decision-making tools, while the organization of work has shifted towards various forms of teamworking, There is however, little...

This paper compares data envelopment analysis (DEA) and ratio analysis as alternative tools for assessing the performance of organisational units such as bank branches and schools. Such units typically use one or more resources to secure one or more outputs, the inputs and/or outputs being...

Purpose - The paper seeks to analyze the evolution of competitive advantage using both "classic" and "extended' resource based theory (RBT) The aim is to examine the different ways in which classic" and extended resource based advantage develops and how they might combine to create long term...