chapter 1 Chapter.1.Perspectives -- chapter 2 Chapter.2.Concepts -- chapter 3 Chapter.3.Engineering -- chapter 4 Chapter.4.Dynamics -- chapter 5 Chapter.5.Soft -- chapter 6 Chapter.6.Systemigrams -- chapter 7 Chapter.7.Togetherness -- chapter 8 Chapter.8.Of -- chapter 9 Chapter.9.Paradox --...

This paper presents the findings of a recently completed research project. It sheds light upon the appropriate governance of inter-firm relationships, in order to achieve competitive success for the whole partnership and its individual members. An exploratory study in the German automotive...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to show how QFD can be used as part of a structured planning and analysis framework for micro-sized enterprises to build-up their e-business capabilities. Design/methodology/approach – This case study has been produced using a new framework which...

Purpose – The purpose of the work discussed in this paper is to understand, analyse and benchmark the “Packing and Filling” processes within BASF. A benchmarking project is described in detail which aimed to cover sites in different countries that supplied many different variants of...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to describe how the application of systems thinking to designing, managing and improving business processes has resulted in a new and unique holonic-based process modeling methodology know as process orientated holonic...

This paper reports on the theoretical foundations and the practical reasons for the increasing popularity of the enterprise management perspective. Theoretical foundations are given that discuss vertically integrated, virtual and extended enterprises in terms of endogenous and exogenous factors,...

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how action research-based interventions can effect change in a complex and challenging professional service environment (Lewis and Brown, 2012). This paper presents a successful way to do this. First, by eliciting factors for change driven by...