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Purpose The purpose of this paper and the contribution to this special issue is to build on Kim and Watkins’ (2018) recent finding that ‘leaders mentor and coach those they lead’ is the item in the Dimensions of the Learning Organization Questionnaire (DLOQ) that is most highly-correlated with performance. Given the criticality of providing strategic leadership for learning and, more specifically, the consistent associations between leaders who mentor and coach and work-related performance outcomes, a better understanding of the associations between the learning organization concept and managerial coaching is warranted. Watkins and Kim (2018, p. 22) contend that ‘future directions for learning organization research include a search for the elusive interventions that would create a learning organization’. In response to this call for research, a research agenda for assessing managerial coaching as a learning organization (LO) intervention is proposed. Design/methodology/approach This conceptual paper briefly reviews literature on the learning organization and the DLOQ instrument, followed by a more in-depth review of the managerial coaching literature and suggestions for how future research could be conducted that more closely integrates these two concepts. Findings Existing literature suggests that to ‘provide strategic leadership for learning’, a dimension in the DLOQ, is one of the most pivotal dimensions for creating learning cultures that build learning organizations. Specifically, an item within this dimension, ‘leaders who mentor and coach’ has been recently identified as one of the most critical aspects associated with strategic leadership for learning. Originality/value The extant managerial coaching literature offers a solid foundation for more closely integrating and mainstreaming the developmental intervention of managerial coaching into learning organizations. Directions for future research that identifies fine-grained perspectives of the discrete facets of managerial coaching in learning organization contexts are suggested.

Purpose – There is an ongoing shortage of talented supply chain managers with the necessary skills and business-related competencies to manage increasingly complex and strategically important supply chain processes. The purpose of this paper is to propose that organizations can create and maintain competitive advantage by leveraging the expertise of human resource development (HRD) professionals to provide a range of developmental and change-oriented interventions related to critical supply chain manager skill sets that are currently in short supply. Design/methodology/approach – This is a conceptual paper. Findings – This is a conceptual paper. Practical implications – Supply chain management (SCM) decisions significantly influence financial performance since firms expend up to 75 percent of their revenue on supply chain activities. HRD professionals ' intervention capabilities in training and development, organizational development and change management uniquely equip them to disseminate a deeper and broader understanding of the SCM concept within organizations, to help prioritize the development of supply chain managers and to address the complex interpersonal issues associated with helping people to work together collaboratively to foster operational innovation and make increasingly complex supply chain processes function effectively. Originality/value – The requisite skill sets for effective supply chain managers are described, linkages between HRD and SCM are highlighted, and areas of HRD professionals ' expertise that can be exploited to better develop supply chain managers ' skill sets and competencies are considered.

Contemporary research highlights multiple societal and environmental benefits in addition to potential economic advantages associated with renewable energy (RE) utilization. As federal and state incentives for investments in RE technologies become more prevalent, RE sources represent increasingly viable alternatives to established fossil fuel energy. RE utilization is recognized as a key component of \"green\" product innovation that helps firms reduce the environmental impact of production processes and diminish their ecological footprints and energy consumption. Yet, despite consistent evidence that corporate sustainability initiatives are favorably associated with firm performance, the limited research that examines associations between RE initiatives and firm performance yields mixed results and an explicit link has yet to be established. Drawing on the natural resource-based view of the firm, we examine the association between RE utilization and firm financial performance over time. Annual ROI, Tobin's Q, and operating margin for large U.S. firms identified as exceptional users of RE in the EPA's Fortune 500 Top Green Power Partners list are compared with their respective industry medians over a 7-year period (2007-2013) and post hoc bootstrapping and sensitivity analyses are performed to further validate the study findings. Our research advances current knowledge about the influence of RE utilization by demonstrating that top RE user firms consistently generated superior financial performance compared to their industry competitors. As such, the study findings lend credence to the existence of a business case that complements the societal and environmental benefits of RE utilization.

Purpose – As global supply networks proliferate, the strategic significance of supply chain risk management (SCRM) – defined as the identification, evaluation, and management of supply chain-related risks to reduce overall supply chain vulnerability – also increases. Yet, despite consistent evidence that firm performance is enhanced by appropriate fit between strategy and context, extant SCRM research focusses more on identifying sources of supply chain risk, types of SCRM strategy, and performance implications associated with SCRM than on the relative efficacy of alternative primary supply chain risk mitigation strategies in different risk contexts. Drawing on contingency theory, a conceptual framework is proposed that aligns well-established aspects of SCRM to present a rubric for matching primary alternative supply chain risk mitigation strategies (redundancy and flexibility) with particular risk contexts (severity and probability of risk occurrence). The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach – Conceptual paper. Findings – The proposed framework addresses supply chain managers’ need for a basic rubric to help them choose and implement risk mitigation approaches. The framework may also prove helpful for introducing business students to the fundamentals of SCRM. Originality/value – The framework and associated research propositions provide a theoretically grounded basis for managing the firm’s portfolio of potential supply chain risks by applying appropriate primary risk mitigation strategies based on the specific context of each risk rather than taking a “one size fits all” approach to risk mitigation. An agenda for progressing research on contingency-based approaches to SCRM is also presented.

Strategy identifies two primary sets of processes through which the firm creates value for its customers by moving goods and information through marketing channels: demand-focused and supply-focused processes. Historically, firms have invested resources to develop a core differential advantage in one or other of these areas—but rarely in both—often resulting in mismatches between demand (what customers want) and supply (what is available in the marketplace). This paper suggests that successfully managing the supply chain to create customer value requires extensive integration between demand-focused processes and supply-focused processes that is based on a foundation of value creation through intraorganizational knowledge management. Integrating demand and supply processes helps firms prioritize and ensure fulfillment based upon the shared generation, dissemination, interpretation and application of real-time customer demand as well as ongoing supply capacity constraints. We draw upon literature in marketing, logistics, supply chain management and strategy to introduce a conceptual framework of demand and supply integration (DSI). We also offer insights for managerial practice and an agenda for future research in the relatively under-researched, but strategically important, area of demand and supply integration.

Purpose Ongoing deliberation about how research productivity should be measured is exacerbated by extensive disparity between the number of citations for scholarly works reported by commercial academic search engines and Google Scholar (GS), the premier web crawling service for discovering research citations. Disparities identified in citation comparison studies have also led to disagreement about the value of the higher number of citations for social sciences and business scholarly articles consistently reported by GS. The purpose of this paper is to extend previous database citation comparison studies by manually analyzing a sample of unique GS citations to a leading operations management journal (i.e. citations found only in GS and not the commercial search engines) to reveal just where these additional citations are coming from. Design/methodology/approach In addition to comparing citation counts for the three databases, unique GS citation data for the sample of journal articles was manually captured and reviewed. The authors’ approach provides a much more in-depth examination of the provenance of GS citations than is found in previous studies. Findings The findings suggest that concerns about the value of unique GS citations may not be warranted since the document types for the unique GS citing documents identified in the analysis are dominated by familiar scholarly formats. Predominantly authentic and validated journal publications, dissertations, conference papers, and book and book chapters accounted for the large majority of the unique GS citations analyzed. Practical implications The study lends further credence to contentions that the use of citations reported in GS is appropriate for evaluating research impact in disciplines where other formats beyond the English-language journal article are valued. Originality/value Developing a more informed understanding of the provenance of unique GS citations in the authors’ field is important because many scholars not only aspire to publish in elite journals with high impact factors based on citation counts provided by commercial databases to demonstrate quality, but also report the larger number of citations for their publications that are reported by GS to demonstrate impact. The in-depth manual analysis suggests that GS provides a more nuanced and comprehensive representation of research impact and international scope than the commercial databases.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to create an instrument for conducting future supply chain transparency research by developing and validating a measure of supplier transparency. Specifically, the research develops a two-dimensional measure of supplier transparency that builds on previous studies that independently examine visibility and traceability in supply chain management (SCM)/logistics. Design/methodology/approach The scale development process is carried out over three stages (item generation, scale purification, scale validation). Survey methods are used with two separate data collection phases involving a total of 358 managers from multiple and diverse industries. Findings The new supplier transparency measure is a concise, two-dimensional scale that has the potential for significant usage in the development and testing of SCM theory. Research limitations/implications This study implemented a purposefully general sampling procedure. However, different industries may have additional, specific constraints regarding what it means to be a transparent supplier. Additional opportunities for future research include applying the new supplier transparency measure to examine supply chain frameworks, regulatory compliance, supply chain relationships and the implementation of information technology. Practical implications Firms are under increasing pressure to be transparent about partner sourcing, resource utilization and other transactional issues related to the products and processes in their supply chains. The new measure may be utilized to address these issues as well as the interaction between supply chain operations and stakeholders by facilitating a quantitative assessment of supplier transparency. Originality/value Drawing on the established constructs of supply chain visibility and traceability, a measure of supplier transparency is developed, supported by a review of the literature, input from subject matter experts and interviews with supply chain managers. Suggestions are made for future validation of supplier transparency within established supply chain frameworks.

Purpose The purpose of this research is to explore how firm market orientation, as a culture, affects the service climate that develops in the firm. Design/methodology/approach Empirical testing is performed at the managerial level and boundary spanning employee level as part of this multilevel study. The sample includes participates from a U.S. based firm operating in the hospitality industry. Findings Results indicate that a market oriented firm culture interacts with other elements such as boundary spanning employee flexibility and control to positively impact the service climate that develops. Research limitations/implications This research provides theoretical implications for the development of a service climate within a market oriented firm culture and the influence of managers on boundary spanning employees in the development of the climate. Practical implications As managers attempt to develop a service climate through a market oriented firm culture, they will find success by providing boundary spanning employees with control and hiring employees that possess flexibility as a personality trait. Originality/value The framework developed in this research provides insights regarding the multilevel nature of service climate development and the impact of a market orientated culture.

The KArlsruhe TRItium Neutrino (KATRIN) experiment will measure the mass of the neutrino with a sensitivity of 0.2 eV (90 % CL). The Forward Beam Monitor (FBM) is a monitoring system which comprises of a complex mechanical setup capable of inserting a detector board into the KATRIN beamline at the end of the source and transport section. The detector board contains a Hall sensor, a temperature gauge, and two PIN diodes which can detect electrons from the source with a precision of 0.1 % in less than a minute within an electron flux density of 106 s−1mm−2.

Purpose – Research suggests that employee engagement favorably influences the provision of customer service, that high levels of service employee engagement are rare, and that firms' strategic profit emphases affect engagement and service climate. This study responds to calls for research that identifies drivers of employee engagement and foundational issues that promote effective service climates within service organizations. Design/methodology/approach – A survey method is utilized to assess data from 502 key informant service employees from multiple service industries. Findings – The findings indicate that service organizations' revenue enhancement and cost containment strategic profit emphases differentially influence employee engagement, and that organizational and job engagement differentially influence service climate. Research limitations/implications – Data comprised of individual service employees' perceptions of their firms' strategic profit emphases and service climates are utilized. Although it is conceivable that some respondents' perceptions of these variables may be misguided, the study findings are based on a large sample of experienced service employees from multiple service industries. Practical implications – The findings suggest that the most effective approach for promoting effective service climate is to hire service employees with a track record of job engagement and then focus on encouraging organizational engagement by creating working environments that support, value, and reward service quality. Originality/value – Managers increasingly realize that how firms treat service employees critically affects customer service quality. However, relatively few studies examine service employees' perceptions of their own engagement and their organizations' working environments. This research incorporates social exchange theory and concepts from the fields of strategy and organizational behavior to assess service employees' perceptions of their organizations' strategic profit emphasis and its influence on engagement and service climate.