The interest in strategic human resource management (HRM) has spawned a number of empirical research studies that investigated the impact of HRM practices on organizational performance. However, very little attention has been paid to address the impact of HRM practices on operations management and to generalize the findings across countries and industries. Success of some business decisions (e.g. globalization and merger and acquisition) necessitates recognition and reconciliation of the differences among HRM practices in different countries and industries. This study attempts to generalize the efficacy of seven HRM practices proposed by Pfeffer in the context of country and industry, focusing primarily on the effects of these practices on operations. The findings provide overall support for Pfeffer’s seven HRM practices and empirically validate an ideal‐type HRM system for manufacturing plants.

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This study attempts to understand certain aspects of the online shopping experience from a consumer’s perspective. In particular, this study investigates the interaction between service failure and online shops’ readiness for service recovery and the resulting impact on customer defection. The findings of the present study suggest that some online shops have severely breached a few fundamental business principles, resulting in lost customers. Specifically, this study finds that failure to institute adequate complaint management and service recovery systems contributed to customer defection. Hence, service recovery and customer retention need to be given due importance during the service design phase, and appropriate management decisions have to be made upfront rather than after service failures occur when it may be too late.

Management literature discusses that the behavioral traits of employees can play an important role in the success of total quality management (TQM). However, little empirical research exists in this regard. Using an international dataset, the present study investigates: the impact of quality management practices on plant competitiveness; and the moderating effect of an employee selection process on the relationship between quality management practices and plant competitiveness. Results show that quality management practices positively impact plant competitiveness. Furthermore, the behavioral traits of employees seem to have a significant impact on the effectiveness of quality management practices. This implies that managers should pay close attention to prospective employees’ behavioral traits and their fit with the TQM philosophy. Managers should not limit their attention to potential employees’ technical skills.

After several years of use of electronic data interchange (EDI) in various industries, the literature is still inconclusive regarding the benefits gained from its usage. We investigated contextual factors of two types: non‐managerial (product diversity, product customization, production instability, and organizational size) and managerial (just‐in‐time and quality management), that might have confounded past results. Our results indicate that the extent of EDI use is significantly related to delivery performance after controlling for the above‐mentioned factors. Furthermore, the data set supported the moderating effect of production instability on the relationship between the extent of EDI use and delivery performance achieved, but failed to support the moderating effect of organizational size.