This is the third report on the ‘Made in Europe’ research programme. Earlier reports concentrated on the maturity of implementation of ‘best practice’ in both the design and manufacturing processes of larger European companies. Here, the authors shift the focus to small and medium-sized...

Although the importance of operations in reaching world-class competitiveness has been highlighted in the operations management literature, small and medium-sized companies (SMEs) have been found to have a poor uptake of world-class practices. Reports on a study of 285 SMEs located in Italy, the...

This article reports the results of a study of innovation and product development at 245 manufacturing sites in the UK and Germany. It examines the relationship between design and performance and the competitiveness of the UK and Germany in design and manufacturing. Overall, few sites reached...

This article reports the results of a study of operational practice and performance in 663 manufacturing sites in Finland, Germany, the Netherlands and the UK. It reviews the competitiveness of manufacturing in each country against a “world class”scale. The results are examined in more...

This article compares the influence of service quality on customer satisfaction in the United Kingdom and the United States and considers the moderating effect of systematic customer feedback and complaint processes. Propositions are developed concerning country differences based on British...

This paper is concerned with the discipline of Operations Management. The paper looks at the convergence and divergence of research in OM in Scandinavia, the US, and the UK. The three different research traditions are described and analysed separately and then compared and contrasted. A short...

This paper provides a cross-country examination of service management practice and performance of service organizations in the UK, the US, and Germany. The findings reported are based on a sample of firms from the international service study from four service sectors: financial services,...

In part, cultural differences between Japan and the West have been cited as contributing to fundamentally different manufacturing strategy orientations. One cultural difference is psychological attitudes toward time, which may lead to different emphases on long-term and short-term goals and...