Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to assess the comparative strengths and weaknesses of leading third‐party logistics providers (3PLs) in the USA with respect to their financial efficiencies during the period of 2005‐2007. It also intends to identify various factors that significantly...

Purpose – This paper seeks to empirically investigate how a heavyweight product manager (HW) can impact the cross‐functional team and project performance (PP) through actively influencing the ways and the extent of strategic alignment (SA), shared project mission, and clarity of project...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present a model linking the role of design engineers to shared team knowledge, enhanced manufacturability, and product development outcomes. New product manufacturability is a quality of the product design that indicates the ease and reliability by...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to benchmark and measure the comparative efficiency of emergency medical services (EMS) in major US cities (populations greater than 100,000). In so doing, this paper aims to develop a benchmark that can be emulated by cities lagging in EMS efficiency....

Purpose – To help fast‐food restaurants enhance their competitiveness and then increase their market share, the purpose of this paper is to measure the service performances of fast‐food restaurant franchises in the USA and identify salient factors influencing the service performances of...

Purpose – This paper aims to measure the comparative managerial efficiency of 24 leading third‐party logistics providers (3PLs) in North America and identify best‐practice firms among these 3PLs. Design/methodology/approach – This paper proposes data envelopment analysis to measure the...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to help fast‐food restaurants successfully penetrate foreign markets and then strengthen their foothold in those markets by identifying cross‐cultural differences in the perceived service quality of fast‐food restaurants; and by examining how those...

Purpose – In an era of downsizing and financial cutbacks, the operational efficiency of third party logistics providers (3PLs) dictates their competitiveness and/or survival. In an effort to help 3PLs enhance productivity and price leverage in the increasingly competitive third party logistics...