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    The mediating role of organisational culture in the relationship between region-based firm ownership type (RBFOT) and manufacturing performance : a test on the apparel industry in Sri Lanka : a thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at Massey University, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2022) Gunasekera, Marlon
    In today’s globalised context, manufacturing firms belonging to various regions of the world expand their businesses beyond borders and gradually become international, multinational, and global companies investing in various countries and regions of the world. Most of these firms establish foreign affiliates and compete with the local (domestic) firms in host countries. In this context, international and cross-cultural operations management studies have high theoretical and practical value in understanding how management practices, systems, techniques, and norms account for the manufacturing performance differences between foreign and local firms. Understanding and explaining the reasons for differences in the manufacturing performance of local and foreign-owned firms is an underexplored research area, especially in the developing regions of the world. This study adopts a cross-cultural operations management perspective and hypothesises that differences in organisational culture traits (related management practice orientations) of firms belonging to different regions of the world account for manufacturing performance differences. The study examines the relationship between Region-Based Firm Ownership Type (RBFOT) and manufacturing performance, and the mediating role of the organisational culture (an important influence on manufacturing practices) in this relationship. The study was based in Sri Lanka (South Asia) with the apparel industry as the context, and local firms are compared with foreign firms from two other regions: Western and East Asian. Semi-structured interviews were used to clarify the research context and to understand how foreign-owned firms set up, operate and establish organisational cultures in Sri Lanka. The subsequent quantitative study covered 93 firms with data aggregated to the firm level to test the mediation model. To test the model, ANOVA and parallel multiple mediation analysis using regression-based SPSS PROCESS macro were adopted. The findings revealed that organisational culture (measured using Denison’s culture traits and related management practice orientations) is a significant mediator in explaining the difference in the manufacturing performance of RBFOTs. Moreover, significant differences in culture traits and related management practice orientations were evident between Western, East Asian, and South Asian firms generating different levels of manufacturing performance. Other contributions include developing a new scale to measure the manufacturing performance of apparel firms and validating Denison’s Organisational Culture Survey (DOCS) in Sri Lanka. Overall, the study contributes to the theory and practice of international and cross-cultural operations management in general and apparel industrial management in particular.
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    A global study on how the national business excellence (BE) custodians design BE frameworks and promote, facilitate, and award BE in their countries : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Engineering at Massey University, Manawatu Campus, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2021) Ghafoor, Saad
    Business Excellence (BE) is a philosophy and a collection of BE Frameworks (BEFs) for organisations to follow to achieve excellence in strategies, business practices, and stakeholder-related performance results, to ultimately become the best they possibly can be. This research aimed to investigate the current state of and best practices in designing BEFs and deploying (promoting, facilitating, and awarding) BE on a national and/or regional level. The aim of this research was met through first conducting a systematic review of BE literature followed by collecting data directly from BECs. A mixed methodology and pragmatic philosophy were used in this research, thus collecting and analysing both quantitative and qualitative data. With regards to the participants of the research, 29 BECs from 26 countries undertook a 46-question survey. Of the survey participants, 13 BECs also undertook optional follow-up online structured interviews. It was found that while the BE literature comprises of 415 journal papers, no research covers how BECs support BE in their countries. There are 74 countries and four regions with BE Custodians (BECs) that promote BE within their countries, of which 57 actively hold BE Awards (BEA) with their last award held in 2018 or after. A key finding of this research is that BECs focus more on their BEA activities than their BE promotion and facilitation activities and report low levels of BE awareness and usage levels. A general framework for designing and reviewing a BEF is provided along with recommendations for BECs to improve their BE promotion, facilitation, and award activities. The findings of this research will help the national BECs to better understand their strengths and opportunities for improvement and to learn from other BECs’ practices. This will assist the BECs to better foster a culture of BE in their countries’ organisations that follow or aim to undertake a BE journey (of using a BE and adopting outstanding practices to achieve results) to ultimately benefit all of their stakeholders and lead to improved economic and societal benefits at a national level.
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    Production and efficiency : the case of the Australian Rugby League : a thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Masters of Applied Economics at Massey University
    (Massey University, 1999) Richardson, Sam
    What matters in the "production" of a game of rugby league? This analysis finds that several game-specific inputs (such as successful goal-kicking percentage, inherent team strength, and momentum of results) in the generation of a game outcome are statistically significantly different from zero at the 10% level or lower. This study also looks closely at measures of productive efficiency, including stochastic frontier modelling and data envelopment analysis (DEA). Panel data from the 1995, 1996 and 1998 National Rugby League (NRL) regular seasons are used to formulate average production functions and stochastic production frontier models and their respective measures of efficiency. It is found that many Sydney-based teams performed relatively more efficiently when compared to non-Sydney teams in 1998. There also appears to be evidence of a "weaker teams bringing the stronger teams down to their level" effect due to differences in point-scoring efficiency and game outcome efficiency in 1998.
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    The definition of appropriate shopfloor performance measures using the theory of constraints philosophy and study of shopfloor performance measures application in New Zealand manufacturers : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Technology in Manufacturing and Industrial Technology at the Institute of Technology and Engineering, Massey University
    (Massey University, 1999) Wongsonegoro, V. T.
    Shopfloor performance measures have significant impact on the overall performance of a manufacturing organisation. Measures are used in many ways to support the decision making function across an organisation. Many research suggest that many shopfloor measures used by manufacturers were derived when producers dominated market (Srikanth et al, 1995; Goldratt, 1988, 1990; Stein, 1994; Kaplan et al, 1992). Cost control was the major factor in ensuring profitable operations (Srikanth et al, 1995). Today cost-based measures are no longer appropriate as other critical dimensions are needed to maintain manufacturing competitiveness (Goldratt, 1990). The market condition dictates such things as faster lead times, increased variety of quality products and cost effective purchasing. Increasing competition has also forced producers to be more proactive in seizing every sales opportunity available. Cost-based measures fails because they focus too much on local improvements and short term performance that do not necessarily translate into overall improvement (Goldratt, 1992). Today manufacturing competitiveness come in three key dimensions: product, price and responsiveness (Goldratt, 1986). Shorter lead times and due date performance assist to achieve manufacturing responsiveness. In turn, these key factors rely on good shopfloor performance assisted by shopfloor measures. Theory of Constraints synchronisation principles were looked at and analysed to explore how they could be used to derive working shopfloor measures. Synchronisation of activities is important to bring about the desired performance through synergy. The step by step approaches of the Five Focusing Steps and the synchronisation mechanism offered by the DBR scheduling could be used as the benchmark whereby shopfloor measures are derived. The TOC performance measurement, Throughput, Inventory and Operating Expense measures, should be the objectives of shopfloor measures achievements.