Best practices, performance advantage and trade-offs: new insights from frontier analysis

Rui Sousa, Ana S. Camanho (), Maria Conceição Silva, Giovani J. C. Silveira and Behrouz Arabi
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Rui Sousa: Universidade Católica Portuguesa, Católica Porto Business School and CEGE
Ana S. Camanho: Universidade do Porto
Maria Conceição Silva: Universidade Católica Portuguesa, Católica Porto Business School and CEGE
Giovani J. C. Silveira: University of Calgary
Behrouz Arabi: Universidade do Porto

Journal of Productivity Analysis, 2024, vol. 62, issue 1, No 5, 110 pages

Abstract: Abstract There are still important theoretical and empirical gaps in understanding the role of best practices (BPs), such as quality management, lean and new product development, in generating firm’s performance advantage and overcoming trade-offs across distinct performance dimensions. We examine these issues through the perspective of performance frontiers, integrating in novel ways the resource-based theory with the emergent practice-based view. Hypotheses on relationships between BPs, performance advantage, and trade-offs are developed and tested with stationary and longitudinal (recall) data from a global survey of manufacturing firms. We use data envelopment analysis, which overcomes limitations of mainstream methods based on central tendency. Our findings support the view that BPs may serve as a source of enduring competitive advantage, based on their ability to lead to a heterogeneous range of dominant and difficult-to-imitate competitive positions. The study provides new insights on contemporary debates about the role of BPs in generating performance advantage and how practitioners can sustain internal support and extract benefits from them.

Keywords: Manufacturing strategy; Data envelopment analysis; Best practices; Performance frontiers (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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DOI: 10.1007/s11123-023-00714-y

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