Linking plant roles and operations strategy decision-making autonomy in international manufacturing networks

Jan Olhager and Andreas Feldmann

International Journal of Production Research, 2022, vol. 60, issue 1, 242-255

Abstract: This paper is concerned with the management of multi-plant manufacturing networks. Two key concepts in this domain are plant roles and plant autonomy in the context of operations strategy decision-making. We investigate the relationship between these two concepts and their impact on plant performance. We use data from 102 manufacturing plants belonging to multi-plant networks. The results suggest a relationship between plant roles and operations strategy decision-making structures. Plants with high levels of decision-making autonomy typically have high levels of production, supply chain, and development competences, while plants with a low level of decision-making autonomy are primarily those with only production site competences. Integrated structures for operations strategy decision-making, which include both the network level and the plant level, exist for all plant types and are thus not restricted to plants with a certain set of site competences. In accounting for both the plant type and decision-making structure, we were unable to detect any significant differences between groups in terms of performance effects. Instead, it seems that the fit between plant type and decision-making structure is important and that choosing the right type of operations strategy decision-making structure moderates the performance of plants with low site competence levels.

Date: 2022
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00207543.2021.1991026 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:tprsxx:v:60:y:2022:i:1:p:242-255

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/TPRS20

DOI: 10.1080/00207543.2021.1991026

Access Statistics for this article

International Journal of Production Research is currently edited by Professor A. Dolgui

More articles in International Journal of Production Research from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().