Editorial

The opening paper in this issue adds to the debate on capabilities in operations strategy. There has been general consensus that four of the most important manufacturing capabilities relate to cost, quality, delivery and flexibility. That is, it is important for an organisation to have the ability to produce with low cost and high quality, combined with reliable and fast delivery, and with flexibility in terms of product mix and volume. However,there has been less consensus about the way in which these capabilities relate to each other. Without rehearsing the well-known arguments, the debate continues between the trade-off school and the cumulative effects school, with the fundamental points of difference between these being summarised as a question:is it the case that improvement in one manufacturing capability can only be achieved at the expense of poorer performance in the others, or is it the case that improvement in certain capabilities, notably quality, enhances performance in the others too? In our first paper, Grossler and Grubner test this latter proposition, embodied in Ferdows and de Meyers’ (1990) sand-cone model of cumulative capabilities, using data from the third cycle of the International Manufacturing Strategy Survey. With data from 465 manufacturing plants, they provide robust evidence in support of the cumulative capabilities argument.

The second paper by Sanchez-Rodriguez, Dewhurst and Martinez-Lorente explores another set of inter-relationships, namely between information technology, total quality management and business performance. While IT and TQM have both been widely researched in organisational contexts there is little empirical data on the relationship between them or how they both relate to performance improvement. Using data from 442 manufacturing firms in Spain, they confirm the importance of the interaction between IT and TQM and show how IT and TQM jointly add value. Spain also provides the context for the third paper by Bonavia and Marin, on the lean production practices in the Spanish ceramic tile industry. They discuss the unique nature of production systems in this industry and the potential utility of lean practices in this context. While they find that lean practices are not widely deployed, they make interesting observations about size effects and conclude that their results are consistent with the proposition that the benefits of introducing the lean paradigm will only be fully realised if done in an integrated way.

Morris, Bessant and Barnes provide interesting case studies on horizontal and vertical networking, encouraging those committed to the idea that learning networks are important for regional competitiveness. Several studies have already examined the role that inter-organisational links can play in supporting the learning and capability-development process, both at the level of the firm and at the co-operative system level. As examples, there are the works of Bessant et al. (2003) on supply chain learning and Morosini (2004) on the learning dimensions of collective efficiency. Nevertheless, while the role of learning is generally accepted as a key element in the international competitiveness agenda, there is still a need for substance to support the rhetoric of industrial clustering, and therefore a need for papers such as this to examine in detail the mechanisms by which learning can thrive at both the individual enterprise and multi-enterprise levels. The authors investigate the process of building such learning networks in South Africa, based on the premise that such a developing country context permits helpful insights to be gleaned because of the prevailing environment of low trust relationships, institutional failures and weakly developed systems of innovation. They distil the key features of establishing and running these networks and develop some generic principles for this process. Finally, in showing how joint cluster activities can help to cut a firm’s cost structure, lock firms into a network and hence intensify member commitment to learning activities, they have demonstrated the interactive nature of these activities in solidifying learning networks.

The final paper by Bendoly, Bacharach, Wang and Zhang builds upon the argument that ERP systems are not just transactional and automated planning mechanisms, but should also be recognised for their collaborative and communication properties. Such intra-organisational communication capabilities may prove especially critical in highly interdependent operating environments. However, the intra-organisational communicative strengths of ERP systems have often been ignored, with research studies focussing solely on their transactional characteristics (Bendoly and Schoenherr, 2005). Bendoly et al.explore managerial assessments of the usefulness of resource planning systems as tools for such intra-organisational communication, and find that the effects of task interdependence on perceptions of the importance of ERP communications capabilities may be moderated by culture. They extend Sharma and Yetton’s(2003) model of the joint effect of management support and task interdependence on the successful implementation of ERP systems by modelling the antecedents of management support. Their findings underscore the significance of contextual,cultural and experiential influence on the kind of managerial support that is assumed to be so critical to technology adoption and diffusion.