House of Quality

This paper builds on the principles and insights from improvisational theater to unpack the nature of collective improvisation and to consider what it takes to do it well and to innovate. Furthermore, we discuss the role of training in enhancing the incidence and effectiveness of improvisation. We propose that two common misconceptions about improvisation have hindered managers' understanding of how to develop the improvisational skill. First, the spontaneous facet of improvisation tends to be overemphasized, and second, there is a general assumption that improvisation always leads to positive performance. Our goal is to clear up the conceptual confusion about improvisation by laying out the various aspects of preparation that are required for effective improvisation. In our theoretical model, we delineate how the improvisational theater principles of "practice," "collaboration," "agree, accept, and add," "be present in the moment," and "draw on reincorporation and ready-mades" can be used to understand what it takes to improvise well in work teams and to create a context favoring these efforts. Our findings support a contingent view of the impact of improvisation on innovative performance. Improvisation is not inherently good or bad; however, improvisation has a positive effect on team innovation when combined with team and contextual moderating factors. We also provide initial evidence suggesting that the improvisational skill can be learned by organizational members through training. Our results shed light on the opportunities provided by training in improvisation and on the challenges of creating behavioral change going beyond the individual to the team and, ultimately, to the organization.

Improvisation and Innovative Performance in Teams

Links and impacts: the influence of public research on industrial R&D

In highly volatile and uncertain times, organizations need to develop a resilience capacity which enables them to cope effectively with unexpected events, bounce back from crises, and even foster future success. Although academic interest in organizational resilience has steadily grown in recent years, there is little consensus about what resilience actually means and how it is composed. More knowledge is particularly needed about organizational capabilities that constitute resilience, as well as conditions for their development. This paper aims to make a contribution to this heterogeneous research field by deepening the understanding of the complex and embedded construct of organizational resilience. We conceptualize resilience as a meta-capability and decompose the construct into its individual parts. Inspired by process-based studies, we suggest three successive resilience stages (anticipation, coping, and adaptation) and give an overview of underlying capabilities that together form organizational resilience. Based on this outline, we discuss relationships and interactions of the different resilience stages as well as main antecedents and drivers. We formulate propositions that can act as a foundation for future empirical work.

https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%2Fs40685-019-0085-7.pdf

Organizational resilience: a capability-based conceptualization

Product design is one of the most important sectors influencing global sustainability, as almost all the products consumed by people are outputs of the product development process. In particular, early design decisions can have a very significant impact on sustainability. These decisions not only relate to material and manufacturing choices but have a far-reaching effect on the product’s entire life cycle, including transportation, distribution, and end-of-life logistics. However, key challenges have to be overcome to enable eco-design methods to be applicable in early design stages. Lack of information models, semantic interoperability, methods to influence eco-design thinking in early stages, measurement science and uncertainty models in eco-decisions, and ability to balance business decisions and eco-design methodology are serious impediments to realizing sustainable products and services. Therefore, integrating downstream life cycle data into eco-design tools is essential to achieving true sustainable product development. Our review gives an overview of related research and positions early eco-design tools and decision support as a key strategy for the future. By merging sustainable thinking into traditional design methods, this review provides a framework for ongoing research, as well as encourages research collaborations among the various communities interested in sustainable product realization.

/pdf/integrated-sustainable-life-cycle-design-a-review-4wxbf010du.pdf

Integrated Sustainable Life Cycle Design: A Review

Purpose – Parallel developments in the areas of agile systems and manufacturing, and supply chain management led to the introduction of the agile supply chains (ASC) concept How to achieve agility in supply chain is, however, a subject of question and research This paper proposes a framework for the development of ASC that is based on the integration of existing supply chain analysis and development models and techniques with those of the supply chain design (SCD) and also the design for the supply chain (DfSC)Design/methodology/approach – The framework mainly relies on research previously carried out by the authors in the areas of developing agile manufacturing and systems and models for demand network alignment An extensive literature survey is carried out to support the ideas and derive the constructs of the conceptual model as a basis for further empirical researchFindings – The model suggest that responding proactively to the market and business environment changes, agility, can be facilitated b

A balanced approach to building agile supply chains

Purpose – The two main constituting elements of the supply chains are “product” and “supply chain operations”, which are highly inter‐related across more than one dimension. Many of the drawbacks in the success and sustainability of supply chains often relate to the segregation of these dimensions. This paper seeks to examine the ideas and to propose an integrated approach to facilitate the dynamic and simultaneous design and development of products and supply chains, thus contributing to the notion of agile supply chains.Design/methodology/approach – Two critical areas of product design and development, and supply chain design and management have been studied, leading to the conceptual development of practical models for approaching the subject. The proposed framework then is examined in a field case study in which a number of issues raised in this paper are validated through observing these supply chains.Findings – A detailed view of the model of simultaneous approach to “design of” and “design for” sup...

Achieving agility in supply chain through simultaneous “design of” and “design for” supply chain

This article describes a practical ‘top-down’ strategic framework to assist manufacturing-based SMEs to develop a degree of resilience when operating in turbulent business environments. The approach builds on the premise that resilience occurs as a result of the implementation of both operational and strategic capabilities. The framework is based on earlier work in the area of manufacturing agility implementation in SMEs developed by the authors, and involves the integration of operational agility tools with tools and approaches from the strategic development literature. With the inclusion of a multi-strategy assessment tool, SMEs are able to prioritise their capabilities to achieve a level of ‘strategic readiness’. This article demonstrates how the approach is applied using two case studies carried out within two traditional manufacturing-based SMEs.

The Role of Agile Strategic Capabilities in Achieving Resilience in Manufacturing-based Small Companies

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to employ agility concept to develop a contingency perspective of relationship between suppliers' involvement, absorptive capacity (AC) and product innovation ( PI ). While the moderating effect of AC on the relationship between supplier involvement and PI performance is investigated, a firm's agility in PI is entered as one dimension of the firm's performance to accommodate a multidimensional perspective. Design/methodology/approach – The paper formulates six hypotheses extracted from the relevant literature. The survey was conducted over the internet by using web-based questionnaire. A sampling frame of 1,200 manufacturing UK-based companies provided 233 usable responses. A confirmatory factor analysis was used to test a validity and reliability of constructs and further the paper employed hierarchical multiple regression to test the research hypotheses. Findings – The results while reaffirm some of the existing theories of the subject provide some differing view o...

A study of contingency relationships between supplier involvement, absorptive capacity and agile product innovation

This paper presents a framework for the implementation of agile manufacturing. The framework employs a bottom-up approach taking the company through three iterative implementation phases of robustness of operation, responsiveness to customers and proactive growth tactics. The framework incorporates a detailed assessment of the level of business environment turbulence and the impact of this turbulence on the enterprise. The results of this assessment are used to identify and customise an implantation plan as well as select the required tools and those measures of performance necessary to monitor the plans progress. This is carried while aligning any action to the company strategy.

Hossam Ismail

Papers

A balanced approach to building agile supply chains

Achieving agility in supply chain through simultaneous “design of” and “design for” supply chain

The Role of Agile Strategic Capabilities in Achieving Resilience in Manufacturing-based Small Companies

A study of contingency relationships between supplier involvement, absorptive capacity and agile product innovation

Agile manufacturing framework and practice