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This paper investigates the nature of port-city relationships in two major port regions of the world, Europe and Asia. Although this issue is well analyzed through either isolated case studies or general models, it proposes a complementary approach based on urban and port indicators available for 121 port cities. In terms of demographic size and container traffic, it shows the decline of port-urban dependence, stemming from changes in global transportation and urban development. However, European and Asian port cities are not identically confronted to the same challenges, notably in terms of their hinterlands. A factor analysis highlights a regional differentiation of port-city relationships according to their insertion in both urban and port systems, with a core-periphery dualism in Europe and a port-city hierarchy in Asia. Thus, the distance to inland markets for European ports and the size of coastal markets for Asian ports are the main factors to explain the nature of port-city relationships in the two areas. It helps to evaluate which European and Asian port cities are comparable beyond their cargo volumes, by putting together micro (local environments) and macro (regional patterns) factors.

The concept of ‘multi-port gateway region’ has been introduced by Notteboom (2010) and has been applied to important seaport markets such as Europe and Asia. However, the dynamics and port development patterns in secondary multi-port gateway regions, such as the Black Sea region, have received far less attention in academic literature. An empirical application of established spatial and functional development models to such secondary port regions might substantiate the external validity of these models as these ports operate in a different spatial, economic and institutional environment.

The aim of the paper is to characterize the spatial dynamics of container ports of the Black Sea multi-port gateway regions by testing the validity of established spatial models on port system development. Furthermore, the expected future evolution path for port hierarchy in the Black Sea basin is discussed. By doing so, the paper assesses to what extent the Black Sea port region is following an ‘expected’ development path as portrayed in a number of port system development models, or alternatively, can be characterized as an atypical port system following its own development logic.

An interview with Zeynep Ton, a professor of practice in the operations management group at MIT Sloan School of Management, about er latest book, The Case for Good Jobs: How Great Companies Bring Dignity, Pay & Meaning to Everyone’s Work.

She believes that leaders can either view their employees as a cost to be minimized, invest little in them and operate with high turnover, or they can see them as drivers of profitability and growth—investing heavily in them, designing their work for high productivity and contribution and therefore operating with low turnover.-- “the good jobs strategy.”

The secret sauce of good jobs strategy is four operational choices—focus and simplify, standardize and empower, cross-train and operate with slack—that improve productivity and contribution and make that higher investment possible.

The competitive costs of low people investment are even higher than the poor operational execution costs.

By making the work better and increasing pay, companies can better attract and keep their talent and enforce high standards, which improve execution and service, uplifting revenue. Few have examined this important topic more closely than Zeynep Ton, a professor of practice in the operations management group at MIT Sloan School of Management, best-selling author of The Good Jobs Strategy: How the Smartest Companies Invest in Employees to Lower Costs and Boost Profits.

This paper studies organizational change following a shift in an industry environment, in the context of how a focused factory adapts to a change in its manufacturing objectives. We use the organizational nature of production operations to suggest that the effectiveness of adaptation will depend on how well the manufacturing requirements of the new objectives match manufacturing capabilities at the production line level. We test our hypotheses using primary data from the Hartselle, Alabama compressor manufacturing focused factory of the Copeland Corporation. The results suggest that factors that influence adaptability derive from individual and organizational competence, and that the direction and extent of their influence depends on the systemic nature of the operational activity concerned. The results highlight roles of carefully designed complexity in operations and of process-oriented decision making on the shop floor in successful adaptation. This work contributes to our understanding of how business organizations overcome constraints to change.

A Decision Support System (DSS), specifically designed to address the needs of small‐to medium‐sized make‐to‐order companies, is currently being developed. It includes two of the most important features in such a system. First, it aims to integrate the production and marketing functions within a firm. Second, it is a hierarchical system which addresses two decision levels – the customer‐enquiry stage and the job‐release stage. That part of the DSS developed for the job‐release stage is described. At this stage the aim of the system is to maintain low work‐in‐progress inventory levels whilst ensuring that all jobs are released in time to be delivered by their promised delivery dates. An approach which uses input/output control is proposed to achieve these objectives. The major advance of the proposed approach is its ability to control the total manufacturing lead times of jobs rather than just considering the shopfloor throughput time.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how insights from economic geography, which are typically explanatory or directed at policy prescription, might be utilized to provide managerial insight at firm level into the processes of and conditions for tacit knowledge transfer.

This is a theoretical paper. The approach used is to take insights from economic geography, in particular a spatial analysis of tacit knowledge transfer by Gertler, and to infer their implications for operations strategy, using a well‐known framework by Slack and Lewis.

The review section finds that the learning organization and operations management literatures are at present poorly connected and in turn, that neither adequately take account of the spatiality of organizations, particularly important when tacit knowledge and organizational routines are emphasized. The synthesis provides an initial suggestion as to operations strategy options, given this spatial perspective.

The review is interdisciplinary: this is its strength, but also its weakness, in that it is necessarily selective in each of the fields it draws on. It provokes further reflection and, hopefully, empirical work to test out aspects of the framework suggested.

The paper reminds managers that “knowledge” and “learning” do not exist in the ether, but are grounded to a large extent in what organizations do in and around their operations. Also suggests that the micro‐spatiality of operations in transnational organizations cannot be sidelined in strategic abstractions but are, in fact, central to how organizations work and learn, and why they exist.

Over the past decade, JIT approach for designing and operating lines has evolved to compete on time dimensions. Traditionally, the lines designed and operated using line balancing approach are considered optimal. Uses simulation methodology to compare each of these approaches under various levels of system variability and total inventory in the system. Shows that when system variability is low, the JIT line produces lower cycle time at almost all levels of total inventory in the system. However, when system variability is high the balanced line yields lower cycle time, especially at lower levels of inventory in the system.

“On its current path, American democratic capitalism is, I believe, heading for an ugly fall.” So warns Roger L. Martin in his new book, When More is Not Better: Overcoming America’s Obsession with Economic Efficiency. Professor Martin has been concerned for some time now about the capability of the American capitalistic model in its current guise to deliver continued prosperity for the many and keep the American democratic dream alive.

Martin sees a serious problem in how the benefits of the American economy and its corporations are distributed; this has been shifting for some time now from a largely Gaussian (widely spread) to an increasingly Pareto (narrowly spread) pattern.

The shape of this distribution is getting ever more extreme, leading to a situation in which the richest families in the country are reaping a wildly disproportionate share of the benefits of economic growth. This kind of distribution tends to be self-reinforcing and that is not consistent with a well-functioning democratic capitalist system.

The actors within the system will keep adjusting to any change in the rules of engagement, and the tendency for them to keep “gaming” the system should be anticipated as both natural and inevitable and provided for accordingly. Breaking the company into subject-matter siloes has little chance of helping the company prosper. It tends to cause independent pursuits of efficiency that don’t add up to effectiveness.

The author of 11 books, Professor Martin has been ranked at the top of numerous lists of the world’s best strategic thinkers, and is a seminal contributor to the design thinking and integrative thinking movements. In his writings he seeks “to develop a new understanding of the broader public conversation around shared and sustainable prosperity, an essential piece of democratic capitalism.” A long-time consultant to major global firms, he offers insights for corporate executives.