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Successful commissioning and startup (CSU) is critical to successful capital project completion. Industrial facility production and operations can also be affected by the level of CSU success. Specifically, transitions between construction, commissioning and startup (CCSU) phases, as well as between project organizations, have been identified as an opportunity for improvement across the industry. The purpose of this paper is to establish and clarify CCSU accountabilities and responsibilities for industrial-type capital projects across these transitions.

This research used a panel of industry practitioners to assist with data collection, review research products and provide industry perspective. The authors used the insight of these CCSU experts to craft new CCSU models. A separate set of industry practitioners was used to validate the findings, and an illustrative case study is also provided. Descriptive analyses and statistics aid the interpretation of research findings.

Substantial research findings include: three novel CCSU project delivery models, a comprehensive CCSU activity flowchart applicable across industrial sectors, and an extensive CCSU RACI (Responsible, Accountable, Consulted and Informed) matrix detailing responsibility and accountability assignments across 60 project functions for all of the 124 CCSU flowchart activities. Four key leadership functions are found to be accountable for most of the CCSU process. A need for frontloading CCSU activities during construction is clearly demonstrated, and the value of administrative activities as enablers of core CCSU activities should not be underestimated.

The findings contribute to a more accurate model of CCSU execution best practices for industrial applications. Specifically, CCSU project delivery models give insight into high-level transition structures between organizations and across phases.

The extensive listing of CCSU activities along with suggested accountability and responsibility assignments for each activity give CCSU managers a starting point for ensuring that important tasks are not left undone during this critical phase of capital projects.

New CCSU models for industrial capital projects presented in this paper (including CCSU project delivery models, activity flowchart and RACI matrix) constitute substantial contributions to the industrial construction body of knowledge. These models provide more comprehensive coverage of CCSU topics than their predecessors, and specifically address activities and issues pertinent to industrial construction. The establishment and clarification of responsibility and accountability assignments are of particular value during this high-transition stage of capital projects.

Shorter lead time with low price and quality product demand is pivotal in the garment industry. Pressure on production lead time stresses the importance of reducing style changeover time in manufacturing factories, and this paper aims to contribute to solving the challenge by showing how the single minute exchange of die (SMED) methodology in practice can be adapted to garment factories in developing countries.

The paper investigates three cases of SMED implementation integrated with responsible, accountable, consulted, informed (RACI) matrices in garment factories in an action research approach. Both quantitative and qualitative methods are applied.

The study shows a reduction of 50% to 64% of changeover time with SMED implementation measured with two key indicators – throughout time and time to reach peak production. Moreover, the implementation depends on the application of the RACI matrix for the distribution of responsibility as well as integration with the basic production flow before and after the application of SMED.

The study can guide better SMED implementation in garment factories with limited investment by stressing the need to adapt to the specifics of the garment industry, secure the division of responsibility and integrate SMED in the production flow before and after the changeover.

Limited research on the application of SMED in the garment industry. This paper contributes to understanding the specific conditions for successful implementation in the garment industry in developing countries and addresses additional activities that help secure a sustainable implementation process.

Refers to previous research on the accuracy of financial analysts’ earnings forecasts and explores the differences in accuracy for loss making and non‐loss making firms using 1985‐1993 US data. Finds an optimistic bias for both types of firms (smaller for more recent forecasts); which is greater for loss making firms even after controlling for forecast horizon, year of forecast and industry. Considers possible explanations for this finding and consistency with other research.

The purpose of this article is to identify the role of cloud computing services in business continuity and disaster recovery plans and delineate responsibilities for their execution. In recent times, there has been a huge upsurge in the usage of cloud service models such as infrastructure-as-a-service, platform-as-a-service, software-as-a-service and disaster recovery-as-a-service. However, in case of an emergency event or during contract negotiations, a question might arise as to who should be accountable and responsible for the content and execution of recovery plans. The main stakeholders in this scenario are cloud service providers and cloud consumers.

After a review of academic articles, standards, guidelines and vendor documentation, a proposal for assigning accountability and responsibility for business continuity and disaster recovery plans is presented, based on the RACI (responsible, accountable, consulted and informed) matrix. In this regard, a critical information infrastructure protection plan, a disaster recovery plan, an information systems contingency plan and a business continuity plan have been elaborated on in the article.

RACI matrices are presented for three general cloud service models and for three DRaaS models (managed, assisted and self-service). Accountability and responsibilities depend on the deployed cloud service model and the roles of cloud service providers and cloud consumers.

The proposed model for accountability and responsibility assignment provides a guideline for the allocation of responsibilities to roles not only during recovery but also during contract negotiations between cloud service providers and cloud consumers. By delving into business continuity and disaster recovery processes and activities, similar yet nuanced RACI matrices should be developed, as presented in this paper. They need to be customised for the specific context.

The purpose of this study was to investigate work-related adaptive performance from a longitudinal process perspective. This paper clustered specific behavioral patterns following the introduction of a change and related them to retentivity as an individual cognitive ability. In addition, this paper investigated whether the occurrence of adaptation errors varied depending on the type of change content.

Data from 35 participants collected in the simulated manufacturing environment of a Research and Application Center Industry 4.0 (RACI) were analyzed. The participants were required to learn and train a manufacturing process in the RACI and through an online training program. At a second measurement point in the RACI, specific manufacturing steps were subject to change and participants had to adapt their task execution. Adaptive performance was evaluated by counting the adaptation errors.

The participants showed one of the following behavioral patterns: (1) no adaptation errors, (2) few adaptation errors, (3) repeated adaptation errors regarding the same actions, or (4) many adaptation errors distributed over many different actions. The latter ones had a very low retentivity compared to the other groups. Most of the adaptation errors were made when new actions were added to the manufacturing process.

Our study adds empirical research on adaptive performance and its underlying processes. It contributes to a detailed understanding of different behaviors in change situations and derives implications for organizational change management.

The basic purpose of this paper is to establish and test the relationship between organizational culture and strategic alliances in a manufacturing supply chain that consists of alliance companies (manufacturers) and alliance partners (suppliers and customers). The relationships have been analyzed from the manufacturer's perspective.

This paper specifically addresses: the relationship between the culture type of alliance company and the degree of integration (trust, communication, and commitment) between the alliance companies and partners; the relationship between the culture type of alliance company and value creation in the alliance company; and the relationship between the degree of integration and value creation in the alliance company. A questionnaire was constructed and distributed to 109 companies that had some form strategic alliance with their suppliers and/or customers. The data collected were tested using analysis of variance and correlation analysis.

The culture type of the alliance company has a significant effect on the degree of integration and value creation. The degree of integration has a significant relationship with value creation. Specifically, the following have been found: ad hocracy culture favors a higher level of communication and commitment with the suppliers; hierarchy culture favors a higher level of commitment with suppliers and helps build a higher level of trust with customers and suppliers; and clan and ad hocracy cultures help in achieving a higher degree of value creation.

Identifying the link between the culture and strategic alliances in a supply chain can help decision makers choose the right kind of alliance partners and decide appropriate strategies that need to be adopted to form and maintain alliances.

The purpose of this paper is to remove confusion surrounding the terms responsibility and accountability from the general and project management arenas by creating “refined” (with unnecessary elements removed) definitions of these terms.

A method of deriving refined definitions for a group of terms by ensuring that there is no internal conflict or overlap is adopted and applied to resolve the confusion.

The confusion between responsibility and accountability can be characterised as a failure to separate the obligation to satisfactorily perform a task (responsibility) from the liability to ensure that it is satisfactorily done (accountability). Furthermore, clarity of application can be achieved if legislative and organisational accountabilities are differentiated and it is recognised that accountability and responsibility transition across organisational levels. A difficulty in applying accountability in RACI tables is also resolved.

Clear definition of responsibility and accountability will facilitate future research endeavours by removing confusion surrounding the terms. Verification of the method used through its success in deriving these “refined” definitions suggests its suitability for application to other contested terms.

Projects and businesses alike can benefit from removal of confusion around the definitions of responsibility and accountability in the academic research they fund and attempt to apply. They can also achieve improvements in both efficiency and effectiveness in undertaking organisation-wide exercises to determine organisational responsibilities and accountabilities as well as in the application of governance models.

Refined definitions of responsibility and accountability will facilitate building social and physical systems and infrastructure, benefitting organisations, whether public, charitable or private.

Clarity resulting in the avoidance of confusion and misunderstanding together with their consequent waste of time, resources and money.

Presents over sixty abstracts summarising the 1999 Employment Research Unit annual conference held at the University of Cardiff. Explores the multiple impacts of globalization on work and employment in contemporary organizations. Covers the human resource management implications of organizational responses to globalization. Examines the theoretical, methodological, empirical and comparative issues pertaining to competitiveness and the management of human resources, the impact of organisational strategies and international production on the workplace, the organization of labour markets, human resource development, cultural change in organisations, trade union responses, and trans‐national corporations. Cites many case studies showing how globalization has brought a lot of opportunities together with much change both to the employee and the employer. Considers the threats to existing cultures, structures and systems.

Discusses arbitrage pricing theory as a multifactor model for explaining rates of return on securities; and the use of principal components analysis to reduce the number of variables studies. Applies these ideas to returns on treasury bills and government bonds for 1,000 business days ending in March 1997 to obtain a set of three endogenous factors for the term structure of interest rates, forecasts returns for one‐day and 30‐day horizons and produces a time series of the forecast errors for eight short‐term interest rates. Compares the results with those from a single factor autoregessive forecasting model and finds that although their accuracy is similar for short horizons, the multifactor model is superior for longer horizons and shorter time to maturity.

The power vacuum in Europe after World War II induced the United States and the Soviet Union to seek European allies against one another (an action that neorealists would describe as “external balancing”). The disparate geopolitical circumstances facing the two super powers were bound to have some effect on the types of alliances they sought. In the United States, many officials and legislators initially were reluctant to maintain a permanent military presence in Europe. They planned instead to help the West European states themselves acquire the wherewithal to sustain a viable balance against the Soviet Union. Not until after the outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950 did U.S. perceptions of the Soviet threat change enough to generate wide spread support for a huge increase in the U.S. military commitment to Western Europe. By that point, U.S. officials already sensed, from the Berlin crisis of 1948‐49, that the United States would need an extensive network of military bases in Western Europe if it wished to deter or rebuff Soviet probes on the continent. The increased deployment of U.S. troops and weapons in Europe from late 1950 on was geared toward that end, and was also intended to reassure the West Europeans of the strength of the U.S. commitment to their defense. That commitment had been nominally codified in April 1949 ‐ primarily at the West Europeans’ initiative ‐ with the establishment of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), but it was not until the early 1950s, after the shock of Korea, that the United States began putting up the resources needed to fulfill its military obligations to NATO.