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The purpose of this paper is to examine the mediating role of immediate performance outcomes on the relationship between dimensions of supply chain integration (SCI) and financial performance.

This study tests the proposed model linking dimensions of SCI, immediate performance outcomes and financial performance using structural equation modeling on a sample of Indian manufacturing companies.

The findings suggest that the relationship between dimensions of SCI and firm performance is fully mediated through the immediate performance outcomes.

This study deals with the potential benefits of SCI, especially in developing countries like India, where a little research has been done in this area. Also, this study provides support to practitioners that SCI is an effective way of improving both supply chain performance and financial performance.

Lending to small businesses has not been perceived to be profitable for banks. This paper demonstrates, by means of a case study, how a Midwest bank in the USA took a proactive approach to turn things around. The proposed reengineering process should produce savings of at least 50 percent in direct underwriting cost. The proposed approach can be used by other banks to obtain similar benefits.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the antecedents and outcomes of supplier integration. Based on an extensive literature review, the study has proposed a research model, which includes both the antecedents and consequences of supplier integration. The study has included contextual factors, namely, trust, relationship commitment to supplier and information technology (IT) for supplier as antecedents to supplier integration. The supplier-related performance outcome and financial performance of manufacturing firm has been modeled as outcome variables.

The proposed research model was tested on a sample of 166 manufacturing firms from India using structural equation modeling.

The results suggested that trust, relationship commitment to supplier and IT for supplier have a positive impact on supplier integration. The results further confirmed the positive impact of supplier integration on supplier-related performance outcome and supplier-related performance outcome on financial performance of the firm.

The study argues that the contextual factors (trust, relationship commitment to supplier and IT for supplier will facilitate the integration between manufacturing firms and their suppliers). Further, the study argues that the supplier integration would lead to specific performance outcome resulting from a high level of integration between manufacturer and their key suppliers and labeled it as supplier-related performance outcome (SRPO). The study conceptualizes and develops scale to measure SRPO and investigates the impact of SRPO on the financial performance of the manufacturing firm.

This study aims to focus on the supply chain (SC) cost drivers of healthcare industries in the USA, as SC costs have increased 40% over the last decade. The second-most significant expense, the SC, accounts for 38% of total expenses in a typical hospital, while most other industries can operate within 10% of their operating cost. This makes healthcare centers supply-chain-sensitive organizations with limited facilities for high-quality healthcare services. As the cost drivers of healthcare SC are almost unknown to managers, their jobs become more complex.

Guided by pragmatism and positivism paradigms, a cross-sectional study has been designed using quantitative and deductive approaches. Both primary and secondary data were used. Primary data were collected from health centers across the country, and secondary data were from healthcare-related databases. This study examined the attributes that explain the most significant variation in each contributing factor. With multiple regression analysis for predicting cost and Student's t-tests for the significance of contributing factors, the authors of this study examined different theories, including the market-based view and five-forces, network and transaction cost analysis.

This study revealed that supply, materials and services represent the most significant expenses in primary care. Supply-chain cost breakdown results in four critical factors: facility, inventory, information and transportation.

This study examined the data from primary and secondary care institutions. Tertiary and quaternary care systems were not included. Although tertiary and quaternary care systems represent a small portion of the healthcare system, future research should address the supply chain costs of highly specialized organizations.

This study suggests methods that can help to improve supply chain operations in healthcare organizations worldwide.

This study presents an empirically proven methodology for testing the statistical significance of the primary factors contributing to healthcare supply chain costs. The results of this study may lead to positive policy changes to improve healthcare organizations' efficiency and increase access to high-quality healthcare.

What are the factors that contribute the success or failure of TQM efforts? Specifically, this study identifies the critical factors and corresponding performance that account for TQM success. Seven critical factors and 45 supporting performance measures are proposed in this study. A possible sequence for implementation of these factors is also presented.

Demonstrates how the Career Services Department of Grand Valley State University was able to implement simple quality principles and tools for improving its Employment Bulletin process. Discusses the overall goal which was to reduce costs and to improve the efficiency of the overall process, and shows, from a nine‐month follow‐up evaluation, that the recommendations suggested by the taskforce improved the system considerably. Reveals that customer complaints were reduced from an estimated average of 12 per month to an average of 4.5 complaints per month, costs were reduced by US$6,209.48 annually and the controlled process increased customer satisfaction, compilation and delivery.

By means of a case study, illustrates how a Midwest service organization in the USA was able to improve the efficiency and productivity of its support staff. Suggests that the process can be used by other service organizations wanting to improve the efficiency and productivity of their support staff personnel.

The aim of this study is to identify and interpret the critical factors and performance measures of TQM. Based on extensive review of prescriptive, conceptual, practitioner, and empirical literature; we were able to identify seven critical factors and more than 45 performance measures of TQM. A possible sequence for implementation of these factors is then presented.

Even though supply chain integration (SCI) has been considered as a vital contributor to business performance, the research shows inconsistency in its finding. Accounting for these inconsistencies, researchers (Fabbe-Costes and Jahre, 2007; Van der Vaart and van Donk, 2008) have highlighted the need to relate the level of integration in a single relationship to the performance outcomes of that relationship. The purpose of this paper is to make an effort in this direction and investigate the impact of customer integration (an important dimension of SCI) on customer-related performance outcome (CRPO) and financial performance of the firm.

Based on an extensive literature review, a research model has been developed hypothesizing the relationships between customer integration, CRPO and financial performance. The research model is then tested using data collected from 214 Indian manufacturing companies. Structural equation modeling was used to test the hypothesized relationship between constructs of interest.

The result showed that there is no direct effect of customer integration on financial performance instead the relationship is fully mediated through CRPO.

This study conceptualizes and develops scale for the specific performance outcome resulting from a high level of integration between manufacturer and key customers and labels it as CRPOs. It further investigates the mediating role of this immediate performance outcome on the relationship between customer integration and firm performance.

This paper examines the implementation of the principles of total quality management (TQM), benchmarking, and productivity in the human resource function of a hospital located in the Midwest region of the USA. This case study illustrates how basic efforts made by the human resource director resulted in tremendous saving for the hospital ‐ for example, displaying a small banner helped the hospital save $10,000.