Welcome to our fourth and final issue for 2021. As we approach the new year, with COVID-19 cases beginning to shrink in many areas, we continue to see many countries opening up and relaxing restrictions. We hope all our readers, authors, editors, reviewers, and their families are doing well as many nations continue to roll out vaccines for the virus. We are hopeful that those populations that have had limited access to vaccines will soon have access and they too will see COVID-19 cases begin to decline. Our hope is that all nations continue to work together to reduce the impact of the COVID-19 virus that has affected us all. I would like to continue to thank our reviewers, managing editor, and associate editors for continuing to provide such stellar support in these turbulent times. We continue to move manuscripts through the review and publication process as fast as we can. We ask folks to continue to be patient, as many folks continue to endure changes to their work environment and lifestyle. We strive to continue to bring rigorous academic research and relevant value by adding practitioner papers that contribute to the engineering management profession. This issue contains four articles, which provide insights related to management tools and techniques for aiding engineering managers in productivity, supply chains, post disaster restoration and competitiveness of medium and small enterprises. We would like to thank all of our reviewers who contributed to the peer-review process as well as Associate Editors Qin, Ng, Searcy, and Long for their contributions to this issue.
The leading article of this issue, “A Study on the Attributes of the Productivity–Liquidity Relationships at the Firm Level,” by Tiruvengadam, Elizondo-Noriega, and Beruvides, features the work of a research team from Texas Tech University. The authors explore the association between firm productivity and liquidity. The study demonstrates that productivity and liquidity have the potential to influence each other. The study suggests both a seasonality and cyclicality relationship for the liquidity-productivity linkage. This knowledge can enable engineering managers to know when and how the relationships of their corporate interventions manifest themselves in performance.
The second article, entitled “Competitiveness Scale as a Basis for Brazilian Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises,” presents the work from a team of researchers in Brazil investigating critical success factors and key performance indicators for small and medium enterprises. Engineers and engineering managers in small-medium enterprises should take interest in this work.
Our third article, “Bottom-Up Resource and Cost Estimation for Restoration of Supply Chain Interdependent Critical Infrastructure,” is an applied engineering management manuscript. Researchers from Truman State University, Missouri University of Science & Technology, and the U.S. Geological Survey collaborate to provide a methodology for determining the resources needed to support workers conducting repairs and other resources necessary to support the restoration. The methodology is validated via a case study on the 2011 EF-5 tornado tragedy in Joplin, Missouri.
Our fourth and final article, “Defining and Measuring Supply Chain Performance: A Systematic Literature Review,” gives us the current state of the research in measuring supply chain performance. This work studies the literature published from 2008 to 2019.
EMJ invites participation and articles from both industry and academia. EMJ is designed to provide practical, pertinent knowledge on the management of technology, technical professionals, and technical organizations. Our goal is to provide value to the practice of engineering management and engineering managers. We welcome all types of research methodologies that are applicable to the current engineering management domain. Applied manuscripts that support the practice of engineering management are welcome as well. For questions or inquiries, please contact us at: [email protected] and [email protected].