The impact of regulation and ownership structure on market orientation in the tourism industry in China

The nature of market orientation and its impact on business performance and other related outcomes have been extensively researched in a range of service contexts including tourism. In contrast, our understanding of the factors that influence market orientation is still limited. This paper reports on a study that contributes to our understanding of the determinants of market orientation within the tourism sector by focusing specifically on the role played by two strategically important variables, namely government regulation and ownership structure. The study analyses two national samples of hotels and travel services in the rapidly growing tourism industry in China. The hotel sector has been open to foreign investment for two decades and has a diversified ownership structure, whereas the travel services sector has been dominated by government owned firms and relatively closed to foreign investment. The results of the survey suggest that of the two new antecedents, only government regulation has a significant role to play in driving market orientation. Internally, access to appropriate managerial and marketing capabilities was identified as a significant predictor of the development of market orientation.

Au service du marechal?:French documentary under German occupation

Following the fall of France in June 1940 and the installation of the Vichy Regime, government set about establishing its own New Order. A reprogramming of national consciousness was attempted through an emphasis on a return to traditional values which was disseminated in various fora. Despite publications on divers aspects of Vichy's propaganda machine, work on film production of the period has merely touched on mainstream documentary without further analysis. Such a lacuna appears inexplicable in light of the production of 550 or so documentaries between 1940 and 1944, especially in view of a 1948 comment by the film writer Roger Régent that documentary in many ways provided a focal point for the regime's wishes for "moralisation collective". This thesis sets out the first steps of a new evaluation of the role of documentary during the Occupation. After an overview of the changes to the industry and the ideological framework of the Révolution nationale, the thesis discusses theories of propaganda together with direct examples of Vichy propaganda documentary. The 'control' thus established is then applied to an examination of the 'Arts, Sciences, Voyages' series of documentary screenings (1941-43) and the Premier congrès du film documentaire (1943), tracing thematic and ideological consonances and evaluating the use of documentary film of the Occupation in the Service of the Marshal.

An investigation of the relationships between service quality, customer satisfaction, perceived value and behavioural intentions

Customer satisfaction and service quality are two important concepts in the marketing literature. However, there has been some confusion about the conceptualisation and measurement of these two concepts and the nature of the relationship between them. The primary objective of this research was to develop a more thorough understanding of these concepts, and a model that could help to explain the links between them and their relationships with post-purchase behaviour. A preliminary theoretical model was developed, based on an exhaustive review of the literature. Following exploratory research, the model was revised by incorporating "Perceived Value" and "Perceived Sacrifice" to help explain customer's post-purchase behaviour. A longitudinal survey was conducted in the context of the restaurant industry, and the data were analysed using structural equation modelling. The results provided evidence to support the main research hypotheses. However, the effect of "Normative Expectations" on "Encounter Quality" was insignificant, and "Perceived Value" had a direct effect on "Behavioural Intentions" despite expectations that such an effect would be mediated through "Customer Satisfaction". It was also found that "Normative Expectations" were relatively more stable than "Predictive Expectations". It is argued that the present research significantly contributes to the marketing literature, and in particular the role of perceived value in the formation of customers' post-purchase behaviour. Further research efforts in this area are warranted.

Aspects of the design and operation of production control systems in manufacturing industry

Computerised production control developments have concentrated on Manufacturing Resources Planning (MRP II) systems. The literature suggests however, that despite the massive investment in hardware, software and management education, successful implementation of such systems in manufacturing industries has proved difficult. This thesis reviews the development of production planning and control systems, in particular, investigates the causes of failures in implementing MRP/MRP II systems in industrial environments and argues that the centralised and top-down planning structure, as well as the routine operational methodology of such systems, is inherently prone to failure. The thesis reviews the control benefits of cellular manufacturing systems but concludes that in more dynamic manufacturing environments, techniques such as Kanban are inappropriate. The basic shortcomings of MRP II systems are highlighted and a new enhanced operational methodology based on distributed planning and control principles is introduced. Distributed Manufacturing Resources Planning (DMRP), was developed as a capacity sensitive production planning and control solution for cellular manufacturing environments. The system utilises cell based, independently operated MRP II systems, integrated into a plant-wide control system through a Local Area Network. The potential benefits of adopting the system in industrial environments is discussed and the results of computer simulation experiments to compare the performance of the DMRP system against the conventional MRP II systems presented. DMRP methodology is shown to offer significant potential advantages which include ease of implementation, cost effectiveness, capacity sensitivity, shorter manufacturing lead times, lower working in progress levels and improved customer service.

An evaluation of certain aspects of an occupational health service

This thesis has been concerned with obtaining evidence to explore the proposition that the provision of occupational health services as arranged at the present time represents a misallocation of resources. The research has been undertaken within the occupational health service of a large Midlands food factory. As the research progressed it became evident that questions were being raised about the nature and scope of occupational health as well as the contribution, in combating danger at work, that occupational health services can make to the health and safety team. These questions have been scrutinized in depth, as they are clearly important, and a resolution of the problem of the definition of occupational health has been proposed. I have taken the approach of attempting to identify specific objectives or benefits of occupational health activities so that it is possible to assess how far these objectives are being achieved. I have looked at three aspects of occupational health; audiometry, physiotherapy and pre-employment medical examinations as these activities embody crucial concepts which are common to all activities in an occupational health programme. A three category classification of occupational health activities is proposed such that the three activities provide examples within each category. These are called personnel therapy, personnel input screening and personnel throughput screening. I conclude that I have not shown audiometry to be cost-effective. My observations of the physiotherapy service lead me to support the suggestion that there is a decline in sickness absence rates due to physiotherapy in industry. With pre-employment medical examinations I have shown that the service is product safety oriented and that benefits are extremely difficult to identify. In regard to the three services studied, in the one factory investigated, and because of the immeasurability of certain activities, I find support for the proposition that the mix of occupational health services as provided at the present time represents a misallocation of resources.

Market orientation of service networks:direct and indirect effects on sustained competitive advantage

Market orientation is an organization-wide concept that helps explain sustained competitive advantage (SCA). Since networks become ever more important, especially in the service sector, there is need to expand the concept of MO to a network setting. In line with Narver and Slater (1990), the concept of Market Orientation of Networks (MONW) is developed. This study indicates how MONW relates to the resource-based view (RBV) of the firm and the industrial organization (IO) view in explaining SCA. It is argued that MONW has direct and indirect effects on SCA. More precisely, the antecedent effect of MONW to resources and industry structure is considered.

Which factors drive firm survival within an industry boundary over time?:the UK onshore oil and gas production industry 1984-1999

This thesis looks at the UK onshore oil and gas production industry and follows the history of a population of firms over a fifteen-year period following the industry's renaissance. It examines the linkage between firm survival, selection pressures and adaptation responses at the firm level, especially the role of discretionary adaptation, specifically exploration and exploitation strategies.Taking a Realist approach and using quantitative and qualitative methods for triangulation on a new data base derived from archival data, as well as informant interviews, it tests seven hypotheses' about post-entry survival of firms. The quantitative findings suggest that firm survival within this industry is linked to discretionary adaptation, when measured at the firm level, and to a mixture of selection and adaptation forces when measured for each firm for each individual year. The qualitative research suggests that selection factors dominate. This difference in views is unresolved. However the small, sparse population and the nature of the oil and gas industry compared with other common research contexts such as manufacturing or service firms suggests the results be treated with caution as befits a preliminary investigation. The major findings include limited support for the theory that the external environment is the major determinant of firm survival, though environment components affect firms differentially; resolution of apparent literature differences relating to the sequencing of exploration and exploitation and potential tangible evidence of coevolution. The research also finds that, though selection may be considered important by industry players, discretionary adaptation appears to play the key role, and that the key survival drivers for thispopulation are intra-industry ties, exploitation experience and a learning/experience component. Selection has a place, however, in determining the life-cycle of the firm returning to be a key survival driver at certain ages of the firm inside the industry boundary.

A formal model of the Semantic Web Service Ontology (WSMO)

Semantic Web Service, one of the most significant research areas within the Semantic Web vision, has attracted increasing attention from both the research community and industry. The Web Service Modelling Ontology (WSMO) has been proposed as an enabling framework for the total/partial automation of the tasks (e.g., discovery, selection, composition, mediation, execution, monitoring, etc.) involved in both intra- and inter-enterprise integration of Web services. To support the standardisation and tool support of WSMO, a formal model of the language is highly desirable. As several variants of WSMO have been proposed by the WSMO community, which are still under development, the syntax and semantics of WSMO should be formally defined to facilitate easy reuse and future development. In this paper, we present a formal Object-Z formal model of WSMO, where different aspects of the language have been precisely defined within one unified framework. This model not only provides a formal unambiguous model which can be used to develop tools and facilitate future development, but as demonstrated in this paper, can be used to identify and eliminate errors present in existing documentation.

Pragmatic development of service based real-time change data capture

This thesis makes a contribution to the Change Data Capture (CDC) field by providing an empirical evaluation on the performance of CDC architectures in the context of realtime data warehousing. CDC is a mechanism for providing data warehouse architectures with fresh data from Online Transaction Processing (OLTP) databases. There are two types of CDC architectures, pull architectures and push architectures. There is exiguous data on the performance of CDC architectures in a real-time environment. Performance data is required to determine the real-time viability of the two architectures. We propose that push CDC architectures are optimal for real-time CDC. However, push CDC architectures are seldom implemented because they are highly intrusive towards existing systems and arduous to maintain. As part of our contribution, we pragmatically develop a service based push CDC solution, which addresses the issues of intrusiveness and maintainability. Our solution uses Data Access Services (DAS) to decouple CDC logic from the applications. A requirement for the DAS is to place minimal overhead on a transaction in an OLTP environment. We synthesize DAS literature and pragmatically develop DAS that eciently execute transactions in an OLTP environment. Essentially we develop effeicient RESTful DAS, which expose Transactions As A Resource (TAAR). We evaluate the TAAR solution and three pull CDC mechanisms in a real-time environment, using the industry recognised TPC-C benchmark. The optimal CDC mechanism in a real-time environment, will capture change data with minimal latency and will have a negligible affect on the database's transactional throughput. Capture latency is the time it takes a CDC mechanism to capture a data change that has been applied to an OLTP database. A standard definition for capture latency and how to measure it does not exist in the field. We create this definition and extend the TPC-C benchmark to make the capture latency measurement. The results from our evaluation show that pull CDC is capable of real-time CDC at low levels of user concurrency. However, as the level of user concurrency scales upwards, pull CDC has a significant impact on the database's transaction rate, which affirms the theory that pull CDC architectures are not viable in a real-time architecture. TAAR CDC on the other hand is capable of real-time CDC, and places a minimal overhead on the transaction rate, although this performance is at the expense of CPU resources.

Green innovation management in the automotive industry

Online case studies. Managing Innovation is an established, bestselling text for MBA, MSc and advanced undergraduate courses on management of technology, innovation management and entrepreneurship. It is also used widely by managers in both the service and manufacturing sectors. Now in its fourth edition, Managing Innovation has been fully revised and updated based on extensive user feedback to incorporate the latest findings and techniques in innovation management. The authors have included a new and more explicit innovation model, which is used throughout the book and have introduced two new features – Research Notes and Views from the Front Line – to incorporate more real life case material into the book. The strong evidence–based and practical approach makes this a must–read for anyone studying or working within innovation. An extensive website accompanies this text at www.managing–innovation.com. Readers can browse an online database of audio and video clips, as well as case study material, interactive exercises and tools for innovation, whilst lecturers can find additional support material including instructor slides and teaching guides and tips. "Tidd and Bessant's text has become a standard for students and practitioners of innovation. They offer a lively account on innovation management full of interesting and new examples, but one that at the same is rigorously anchored in what we have learned over the last thirty years on how to manage that ultimate business challenge of renewing products, processes, and business models. Those who want to innovate must read this book." — Professor Arnoud De Meyer, Director, Judge Business School, University of Cambridge, UK "Innovation matters and this book by two leaders in the field which is clear and practical as well as rigorous should be essential reading for all seeking to study or to become involved in innovation." — Chris Voss, Professor of Operations and Technology Management, London Business School "...comprehensive and comprehensible compendium on the management of innovation. It is very well organized and very well presented. A pedagogic tool that will work at multiple levels for those wishing to gain deeper insights into some of the most challenging and important management issues of the day." — David J. Teece, Thomas W. Tusher Professor in Global Business, Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley, USA "Those of us who teach in the field of Innovation Management were delighted when the first edition of this book appeared 11 years ago. The field had long been in need of such a comprehensive and integrated empirically–based work. The fact that this is now the 4th edition is clear testimony to the value of its contribution. We are deeply indebted to the authors for their dedication and diligence in providing us with this updated and expanded volume." — Thomas J. Allen,Howard W. Johnson Professor of Management, MIT Sloan School of Management, USA.

Efforts towards adaptability enhancement:how manufacturing and service industries can learn from each other

This paper discusses the recent emerging efforts for adaptability enhancement of Japanese industries to cope with a volatile demand environment. It is based on an analysis of data obtained from respondent companies. The analysis is focused on both manufacturing and manufacturing- related service industries such as construction/maintenance, software supply, manufacturing consultation and logistics industries to highlight their current situation, the sense of crisis in Japanese companies and possible future directions in relation to the two industry sectors. The principal conclusion is that for most companies consideration of a revision or modification to its cost structure is an essential requirement for survival in the global competitive environment.

The evolution of logistics service providers and the role of Internet-based applications in facilitating global operations

The need for global logistics services has increased dramatically and become extremely complex and dynamic as a result of a number of changes in manufacturing and in industrial production. In response, the logistics industry is changing in a variety of ways, including mergers to form integrated transportation service providers, outsourcing and increased use of information technology. The aim of this chapter is to provide an overview of the evolution and the most important trends in the logistics services provider (LSP) industry. Specific emphasis will be given to the role of Internet-based applications. Within this context, the chapter will also present the role of logistics e-marketplaces. In particular, based on the secondary research of currently existing logistics on-line marketplaces, an analysis and classification of them is provided with the aim of identifying service gaps. The analysis reveals that logistics electronic marketplaces, despite the increased range of services currently offered, still face limitations with reference to integrated customs links or translation services, which both reduce the efficiency of global operations.

Exploring demand and production planning challenges in the food processing industry:a case study

This paper explores demand and production management challenges in the food processing industry. The goal is to identify the main production planning constraints and secondly to explore how each of these constraints affects company’s performance in terms of costs and customer service level. A single case study methodology was preferred since it enabled the collection of in-depth data. Findings suggest that product shelf life, carcass utilization and production lead time are the main constraints affecting supply chain efficiency and hence, a single planning approach is not appropriate when different products have different technological and processing characteristics.

Servitization and enterprization in the construction industry:the case of a specialist subcontractor

The current economic climate and a continuing fall in output of the UK construction industry has led to falling prices and margins particularly affecting those lower down in the supply chain such as specialist subcontractors. Coen Ltd. is one such company based in the West Midlands. Faced with a need to up its game it has embarked on a business improvement programme concentrating on better operational efficiency, building stronger client relationships and delivering value added services. Lacking appropriate internal resources Coen has joined with Aston Business School in a 2 year ERDF sponsored project to fulfil the transformation programme. The paper will describe the evolution of product- service offerings in construction and link this with the work being carried out at Coen with Aston and outline the anticipated outcomes.

Making energy service companies (ESCOS) future fit

Energy service companies (ESCOs) are faced with a range of challenges and opportunities associated with the rapidly changing and flexible requirements of energy customers (end users) and rapid improvements in technologies associated with energy and ICT. These opportunities for innovation include better prediction of energy demand, transparency of data to the end user, flexible and time dependent energy pricing and a range of novel finance models. The liberalisation of energy markets across the world has leads to a very small price differential between suppliers on the unit cost of energy. Energy companies are therefore looking to add additional layers of value using service models borrowed from the manufacturing industry. This opens a range of new product and service offerings to energy markets and consumers and has implications for the overall efficiency, utility and price of energy provision.