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This paper is the first in a series that will examine the management of innovation by cross‐functional, multi‐disciplinary patient care teams in a palliative care environment. This highly innovative environment is singularly focused on relieving the suffering of patients and their socially related carers during an end of life experience. The singular focus enables and encourages palliative care practitioners to break through and diminish or accommodate professionally‐based paradigm conflicts and organisational politics. This facilitates collaborative team‐based efforts, including the patient and the patient’s social support group, to address the multi‐causal uncertainties that characterise end of life in palliative care. The continuous innovation model used in the European Union funded CIMA project is used as a starting point for this research. While many businesses have struggled to implement self‐regulating teams and have invested considerable resources in attempting to gain some advantage from teamwork it appears palliative care professionals have adopted self‐regulating work teams in a highly uncertain environment as the most suitable human resource structure and practice.

Palliative care is a complex environment in which teams of health care professionals are constantly challenged to match the configuration of care delivery to suit the dynamics of the whole of a patient’s bio‐medical, social and spiritual situations as they change during the end of life process. In such an environment these teams need to engage in ongoing interaction between different professional disciplines, incremental improvement in care delivery, learning and radical innovation. This is aimed at combining operational effectiveness and strategic flexibility, exploitation and exploration in a way that ensures the best possible end of life experience for the patient. This paper examines previous research on the management competences and the organisational capabilities necessary for continuous innovation, and analyses evidence emerging from a study of palliative care. Work on the relationships between innovation capacities, organisational capabilities and team‐based competence is drawn together. Evidence is presented from research into the management of innovation in palliative care.

Continuous improvement (CI) is a process used by manufacturing firms to improve quality, reduce lead times, reduce price, and improve delivery reliability. A survey of firms in Australia was conducted to determine the main motives for implementing CI and the focus of CI activities. This article will examine the responses of firms using CI. However, not all firms surveyed were at the same stage of development in their use of CI. While some firms were using CI across all aspects of their business and regarded CI as second nature most firms were in the early stages of development of CI using it primarily in the manufacturing function at the operator level. This article reports on the experiences of mature firms, so providing useful guidance for developing firms seeking to learn from the experience of mature CI.

The importance of innovation to the survival of organisations in a turbulent environment has led to greater emphasis on improving the innovation process. Where learning is captured and applied to existing and current innovation processes, the opportunity exists for improvement in innovation processes. Research has been undertaken with the objective of developing, testing and disseminating a methodology to facilitate product innovation. Presents an analysis of clusters of learning behaviours and identifies variations between different occupational clusters. Examines aspects of occupational culture and problems associated with examining organisations learning from a single perspective.

The purpose of this paper is to examine empirically, an industry development paradox, using embryonic literature in the area of strategic supply chain management, together with innovation management literature. This study seeks to understand how, forming strategic supply chain relationships, and developing strategic supply chain capability, influences beneficial supply chain outcomes expected from utilizing industry-led innovation, in the form of electronic business solutions using the internet, in the Australian beef industry. Findings should add valuable insights to both academics and practitioners in the fields of supply chain innovation management and strategic supply chain management, and expand knowledge to current literature.

This is a quantitative study comparing innovative and non-innovative supply chain operatives in the Australian beef industry, through factor analysis and structural equation modeling using PAWS Statistical V18 and AMOS V18 to analyze survey data from 412 respondents from the Australian beef supply chain.

Key findings are that both innovative and non-innovative supply chain operators attribute supply chain synchronization as only a minor indicator of strategic supply chain capability, contrary to the literature; and they also indicate strategic supply chain capability has a minor influence in achieving beneficial outcomes from utilizing industry-led innovation. These results suggest a lack of coordination between supply chain operatives in the industry. They also suggest a lack of understanding of the benefits of developing a strategic supply chain management competence, particularly in relation to innovation agendas, and provides valuable insights as to why an industry paradox exists in terms of the level of investment in industry-led innovation, vs the level of corresponding benefit achieved.

Results are not generalized due to the single agribusiness industry studied and the single research method employed. However, this provides opportunity for further agribusiness studies in this area and also studies using alternate methods, such as qualitative, in-depth analysis of these factors and their relationships, which may confirm results or produce different results. Further, this study empirically extends existing theoretical contributions and insights into the roles of strategic supply chain management and innovation management in improving supply chain and ultimately industry performance while providing practical insights to supply chain practitioners in this and other similar agribusiness industries.

These findings confirm results from a 2007 research (Ketchen et al., 2007) which suggests supply chain practice and teachings need to take a strategic direction in the twenty-first century. To date, competence in supply chain management has built up from functional and process orientations rather than from a strategic perspective. This study confirms that there is a need for more generalists that can integrate with various disciplines, particularly those who can understand and implement strategic supply chain management.

Possible social implications accrue through the development of responsible government policy in terms of industry supply chains. Strategic supply chain management and supply chain innovation management have impacts to the social fabric of nations through the sustainability of their industries, especially agribusiness industries which deal with food safety and security. If supply chains are now the competitive weapon of nations then funding innovation and managing their supply chain competitiveness in global markets requires a strategic approach from everyone, not just the industry participants.

This is original empirical research, seeking to add value to embryonic and important developing literature concerned with adopting a strategic approach to supply chain management. It also seeks to add to existing literature in the area of innovation management, particularly through greater understanding of the implications of nations developing industry-wide, industry-led innovation agendas, and their ramifications to industry supply chains.

Much has been made of the need to empower employees at all levels of an organisation. There must be a genuine willingness on the part of management and workers to work together to ensure that empowerment will be accepted and succeed. Among those organisations which are prepared to bear the cost of training and multiskilling their employees, training is often ineffective and firms do not realise benefits from their investment. How can training be delivered to maximise the probability that the workers will learn and be able to implement new skills? Reports on a success story in a multi‐site manufacturing organisation which was able to train operations workers on the job, and by using active learning techniques demonstrate to the organisation the benefits of training. The reasons behind these changes, the effectiveness of the training programme, and the views of workers on the factory floor are examined. Interviews indicate that the success of the training programme, combined with other tactics, has seen real cultural change taking pace in the organisation, and workers believe they have been empowered.

Palliative care is a complex environment in which teams of healthcare professionals are constantly challenged to match the configuration of care delivery to suit the dynamics of the patient's bio‐medical, social and spiritual situations as they change during the end‐of‐life process. In such an environment these teams need to engage in ongoing interaction between different professional disciplines, incremental improvement in care delivery, learning and radical innovation. This is aimed at combining operational effectiveness, strategic flexibility, exploitation and exploration, in a way that ensures the best possible care for the patient. This paper examines previous research on the management competences and the organisational capabilities necessary for continuous innovation, and analyses evidence emerging from a study of palliative care. Work on the relationships between innovation capacities, organisational capabilities and team‐based competence is drawn together. Evidence is presented from research into the management of innovation in palliative care.

The purpose of this paper is to gain a better understanding of the types of relationships that exist along the supply chain and the capabilities that are needed to manage them effectively.

This is exploratory research as there has been little empirical research into this area. Quantitative data were gathered by using a self‐administered questionnaire, using the Australian road freight industry as the context. There were 132 usable responses. Inferential and descriptive analysis, including factor analysis, confirmatory factor and regression analysis was used to examine the predictive power of relational factors in inter‐firm relationships.

Three factors were identified as having significant influence on relationships: sharing, power and interdependency. “Sharing” is the willingness of the organisation to share resources with other members of the supply chain. “Power” relates to exercising control based on experience, knowledge and position in the supply chain. “Interdependency” is the relative levels of dependency along the supply chain.

The research only looks at the Australian road freight industry; a wider sample including other industries would help to strengthen the generalisability of the findings.

When these factors are correlated to the types of relationship, arm's length, cooperation, collaboration and alliances, managerial implications can be identified. The more road freight businesses place importance on power, the less they will cooperate. The greater the importance of sharing and interdependency, the greater is the likelihood of arm's length relationships.

This paper makes a contribution by describing empirical work conducted in an under‐researched but important area – supply chain relationships in the Australian road freight industry.

An increasing share of manufacturing, logistics and R&D activities takes place today in a number of geographically dispersed organisational units. The units involved can be different autonomous companies or a number of focused subsidiaries. Using the CIMA‐methodology and its computerised questionnaire as an analysis and action research tool, organisational learning in distributed product development projects at a multinational company in the telecom industry has been investigated. Organisational units with different operational focuses displayed differences in the types of learning to which attention was primarily given. Based on the findings, the role of communities of practice in distributed product development is investigated.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of cross‐functional teams in the alignment between system effectiveness and operational effectiveness after the implementation of enterprise information systems (EIS). In addition, it aims to explore the contribution of cross‐functional teams to improvement in operational performance.

The research uses a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods, in a two‐stage methodological approach, to investigate the influence of cross‐functional teams on the alignment between system effectiveness and operational effectiveness and the impact of the stated alignment on the improvement in operational performance.

Initial findings suggest that factors stemming from system effectiveness and the performance objectives stemming from operational effectiveness are important and significantly well correlated factors that promote the alignment between the effectiveness of technological implementation and the effectiveness of operations. In addition, confirmatory factor analysis has been used to find the structural relationships and provide explanations for the stated alignment and the contribution of cross‐functional teams to the improvement in operational performance.

The principal limitation of this study is its small sample size.

Cross‐functional teams have been used by many organisations as a way of involving expertise from different functional areas in the implementation of innovative technologies. An appropriate use of the dimensions that emerged from this research, in the context of cross‐functional teams, will assist organisations to properly utilise cross‐functional teams with the aim of improving operational performance.

The paper presents a new approach to measure the effectiveness of EIS implementation by adding new dimensions to measure it.