Leadership practices, competitive priorities, and manufacturing group performance

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of manufacturing leadership in enhancing manufacturing performance for different manufacturing configurations.Design/methodology/approach – Survey data collected from three levels of respondents in excess of 480, from 98 manufacturing units in the USA are used to test the study hypothesis using the cluster analysis and regression models.Findings – Effective leadership is positively associated with overall manufacturing performance beyond the fixed effects of organizational variables, such as competitive orientation and industry membership. The manufacturing leadership, however, does not seem to affect customer satisfaction.Research limitations/implications – The paper illustrates the use of behavioral theory of leadership in the context of managing operations with varying competitive orientations in different industries. Future research should, however, attempt to match different leadership practices/styles to different competitive orientations, a...

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