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Managing Operations to Competitive

Advantage

Article in International Studies of Management and Organization January 1992

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1nternational Studies of Management & Organization., Vol. 22, No. 4, pp. 3-5

Preface
Managing Operations to Competitive Advantage
Operations management is concerned with the design, planning, and control of systems for
the production of goods and the provision of services. In the past there was a belief that the
"operations" function of a business should simply provide support for marketing. The more
recent view, however, is that the management of operations can provide a means of gaining
competitive advantage. This aspect of operations management has been further highlighted
by the demands for greater variety and quality, which must be seen against a background of
increasing resource costs.
The articles in this issue of International Studies of Management and Organization are
concerned with this general concept. They are all based on papers presented at the Sixth
International Conference of the Operations Management Association-U.K. held at Aston
University in England in 1991. At the conference itself, more than eighty papers were
presented by authors from fifteen countries around the world. Those selected for this issue all
relate to organizational aspects of operations management and illustrate some of the latest
thinking in the areas with which they are concerned. The topics covered in the papers
embrace a wide range of areas of concern, including: operations strategy; operations system
design and implementation; organization design and innovation; and human resources
management.
A further feature of these papers is that they are based on research conducted in a large
number of different countries so that they offer the additional benefit of providing interesting
insights into some of the relevant national considerations and contexts.
In the first paper Akkermans and Van Aken report the results of a critical analysis of the
operations-strategy literature and identify a number of deficiencies, or "lacks," in the areas of
organization, cognition, and attitude. Their thesis is that general business strategy identified
and addressed similar problems by adopting an approach to strategy formulation that has
shifted away from purely rational, analytical techniques toward more balanced approaches in
which the content-oriented activities are embedded in a process of strategic change. The
authors maintain that, if operations strategy formulation is to adopt a similarly more
sophisticated analysis, there must be greater recognition of the "soft" issues such as
organizational culture, organizational politics, and organizational learning.
The second contribution, by Corbett and Harrison, offers further insight into some of these
issues. The authors are the New Zealand and Australian associates of the "Manufacturing
Futures Project" and, in this paper, they present the results
of their investigations into the effects of emphasizing work-force-related programs
such as training, quality circles, and giving workers more tasks and responsibilities.
They demonstrate the advantages to be gained in terms of improved performance, but see a
need for follow up programs if the potential benefits are to be fully achieved.
Both papers on operations systems design and implementation consider the case of flexibility
but within different contexts. Boer and Krabbendam address the question of implementing
and operating technology known as FMS, or "flexible manufacturing systems." FMS are
highly automated component-processing activities controlled by integrated computer
systems. The record of many companies in adopting such equipment is often poor, so the
authors have employed case studies from the United Kingdom, Belgium, and the Netherlands
to develop a model that can be used as a practical tool for organizing the implementation of
FMS more effectively.
This paper is complemented by one written by myself and Karlsson. In comparison with the
previous paper where the flexible systems in question were highly automated component-
processing facilities, we consider developments that have taken place in high-volume car
 1nternational Studies of Management & Organization., Vol. 22, No. 4, pp. 3-5

assembly systems where the type of flexibility requirements lead to the continued prevalence
of manual operations.
Here, the question of work organization is important, and Swedish car manufacturer have
probably done more than any others to find alternative ways of organizing work to achieve
competitive advantage. We examine the development of these alternative systems and
describe how they have been facilitated within some of the new car plants in Sweden.
Smith and Tranfield and their colleagues have contributed the first of the following two
papers on organizational design and innovation. They report on some of the results of an
inter-institutional project based on studies in British companies that have been reported as
being successful implementers of advanced manufacturing technology. Twenty-one metrics
have been used to identify changes that substantiated the emergence of a new paradigm of
manufacturing organization. Clark and his colleagues also describe some of the results of a
major research project. Their main focus, however, has been to address the managerial
innovation diffusion process from the perspective of the user. Their paper concentrates on the
"Decision-Episode Framework," which directs attention toward the key problems in the
appropriation of innovations by user firms. In the research, the framework has been applied to
a set of case studies where "computer-aided production management" has been innovated in
the companies concerned.
The two final papers of this issue are very distinctive. Both consider the question of human
resources management, but they are concerned with quite different aspects of this important
element in the management of operations. Dadfar and Gustavsson have identified a factor that
is crucial to the success of international construction projects, namely, the management of
cultural diversity. Using cases of Swedish construction firms undertaking projects in the
Middle and Far East, they shed light on the problems and advantages of employing a
multicultural work force. It seems that cultural similarity is not necessarily beneficial, and
that the element of competition created by having members of different cultures within the
group can lead to improved performance. Grant and Harvey examine the conventional view
that employees and their respective union resist and often oppose productivity-improvement
programs introduced by management. Through 200 interviews conducted with employers and
employees in both union and non-union workplaces in Canada, they demonstrate that there is
a general and positive convergence in respondents' perceptions regarding the state of
productivity and industrial relations. Not only does their survey generally show no significant
differences between union and non-union environments, it also indicates that unionism and
productivity can be mutually supportive in a healthy industrial relations context where
productivity improvement programs are not seen as threatening to working conditions.
In today's industrial and commercial environment the challenge from competitors in the
marketplace is becoming ever intensified and the need to manage productive resources more
efficiently is being increasingly driven by a constant downward pressure on production costs.
The papers in this issue of ISMO illustrate the diverse range of issues that are of concern to
managers of operations within organizations seeking to respond to these challenges. In
particular, they demonstrate the vital need for operations managers to be equipped with the
necessary skills and expertise that will allow them to make most effective use of available
knowledge and information, and thereby enable their organizations to achieve improved
levels of performance.

DAVID BENNETI
Aston Business School
Birmingham, United Kingdom

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