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Keywords Corporate strategy, Operations and production management, United Kingdom
Abstract This paper reports on research aimed at operationalising the Hayes and Wheelwright four-stage model describing the strategic role of operations. Although this model has classic status in operations management, it is little, tested in practice. A questionnaire derived from the model was administered in a large-scale postal survey of managers in a variety of UK manufacturing and service organisations. Analysis of the responses indicates that only a little over half of respondents were able to provide an assessment of their organisation's operations that fitted the logic of the four-stage model. This seems to imply that managers have difficulty in assessing the strategic role played by their operations in an internally consistent and coherent manner. The results question the utility of the model and raise concerns about its validity.
Introduction
The four-stage model describing the possible strategic roles that an organisation's operations might play was originally proposed by Hayes and Wheelwright (1984) for manufacturing and subsequently extended for services by Chase and Hayes (1991). The model has currently attained classic status (Sower et al., 1997) and has achieved widespread acceptance, becoming ubiquitous in the operations management curriculum. It has an attractive simplicity and high face validity. However, the empirical research from which the model was developed seems to derive exclusively from large US corporations in the late 1970s and early 1980s. There seem to have been few subsequent attempts to test its practical application. This paper reports on research aimed at operationalising the model and testing its utility in a variety of UK organisational contexts (including manufacturing and services, profit seeking and not-for-profit (NFP)). The paper opens with a discussion of the four-stage model, identifying its attractions and its shortcomings. The development of a questionnaire aimed at assessing an organisation's operations in terms of the model is outlined. The results of a postal survey of managers in UK-based organisations using the questionnaire are then presented. These results, which appear to be problematic are then discussed and potential explanations considered. The paper concludes by outlining future research that might be undertaken to resolve the issues raised by the results from the survey.
Background
The 1970s and 1980s were problematic for US manufacturing industry.
American society experienced...