竞争供应链中制造商环保技术投资决策研究

本文考虑消费者对质量差异化产品的异质性偏好以及环保意识,建立了消费者效用函数以及产品需求函数,构建了差异化竞争制造商及其零部件供应商之间的动态博弈模型;进而,研究了竞争供应链中制造商环保技术投资策略,考察了市场竞争对供应链均衡定价决策、环保技术投资决策以及消费者福利的影响。研究结果表明：拥有较高技术水平的制造商总是会选择更高的环保技术投资水平,但消费者也需为此支付更高的产品溢价;制造商环保技术投资会影响产品销售价格并有利于提升消费者福利,拥有较高技术水平的制造商总是有动机选择投资环保技术,而技术水平较低的制造商则不会有动机选择投资环保技术;市场竞争会导致供应商和制造商定价决策的变化,但此时供应商反而能够获得更多利润。     

Identifying the business value of superior environmental performance: Current deliberations from the aspen institute

The growing connection between the environment and economic growth has created many challenges for business. In response, a set of recent dialogues, convened by the Aspen Institute, focused on the business opportunities inherent in environmental leadership. The conclusion? In a nutshell, businesses that integrate their environmental planning with their strategic business planning can improve their corporate performance and gain a competitive edge. Investors and analysts who understand these connections will be better positioned to identify companies with superior stock appreciation in the newly emerging sustainability-driven marketplace of the 21st century.     

Internationalizing managers: Speeding up the process

Most multinational companies agree that their managers need international expertise; but a recent survey surprisingly revealed that more than half of the large European corporations participating in the study lacked a strategy — either in writing or as a commonly articulated value — for internationalizing their managers (Price Waterhouse/Cranfield, 1991, p. 14). Not only must cutting-edge companies implement this process, but they have to find ways to speed it up to stay competitive.Brooklyn Derr and Gary Oddou report a 1991 survey conducted with 105 European multinationals employing an average of 30,000 workers each. The respondents, usually directors of human resource management and management development, identified the current strategies most frequently used to internationalize their firms, the importance assigned these strategies (not necessarily the same thing), and short-range trends. The article also explores the different challenges presented by attempting to internationalize senior managers as compared to junior managers.Expatriation/repatriation has been the traditional means of internationalizing managers, but companies are not doing a uniformly able job in preparing their managers for expatriation nor in taking advantage of their expertise after they return. In addition to making recommendations about expatriation/repatriation, the authors suggest newer, faster practices for internationalizing managers.     

Responding to community expectations on corporate environmental performance: How to develop effective citizen advisory panels

Corporations are facing increasing pressure to improve their environmental performance. Many are turning to citizen advisory panels (CAPs) as a way improve their decision- making and enhance their public accountability. CAPs are committee of citizens who meet regularly with managers to discuss environmental and other community issues associated with their companies. These panels allow organizations to recieve the type proactive environmental decisions. CAPs also can enble a company to communicate to and receive input from the community in a more controlled and confidential mannier than many other public processes.While CAPs offer many potential advantages, there are also a number of challenges that must be met before their benefits can be realized. This article describes a number of steps that companies should take to develop effective CAPs, including: forming the panels, selecting members, conducting meetings and communicating to citizen members. In addition, the authors discuss some of the lessons learned, including how to ensure that CAPs are operated in a manner that truly serves the interests of both the community and the company.     

Approaches to Manufacturing Regeneration: Some Empirical Data1

The study examined the efforts of 11 manufacturing companies to regenerate competitiveness through implementing improvement programmes. Data were collected about the activities seen to constitute improvement programmes as well as the reasons and intentions given for their implementation. Companies were found to have shared a common set of strategic intentions whilst having used differently constituted improvement programmes to achieve them. This similarity in strategic intent was seen as evidence of companies using improvement programmes to facilitate movement from mass to lean production paradigms. AU of the 11 companies studied exhibited widespread use of improvement activities. However, significant differences in individual company choice was interpreted as contra-evidence of improvements being driven solely by manufacturing fashions. This together with their similarities in strategic intent was seen as evidence that companies tailored their regenerative efforts to suit individual circumstances in pursuit of a generic strategic recipe. Some companies had discovered they had developed new capabilities through their regenerative efforts and these were seen as providing a distinctive competitive advantage. All of the companies set out with strategic intentions which centred on catching up with or imitating the best of their competitors – over a half discovered en route a means for changing the rules of the game.     

利益相关者、管理认知对企业环境保护战略选择的影响——基于我国上市公司的实证研究

企业对环境规制心存疑虑,担心规制增加企业成本,为此本文从战略管理层面探讨如何调动企业处理环境问题的积极性。通过对我国上市公司CEO的调研,发现管制利益相关者和次要利益相关者中的媒体是企业在环境问题上感知的主要压力;管理者越认为环境问题是商业机会以及管理者的环境意识越强,企业越有可能实行前瞻型环境战略。     

Competitive renaissance through digital transformation

Dramatic health, environmental, and social-related challenges put pressure on firms to rethink their strategies and growth paths. Is a digital-enabled transformation able to help firms cope with these challenges and drive a competitive renaissance of our economic system? Are extant theories and concepts able to interpret the digital transformation? This management focus section aims to advance a relevant and impactful research agenda in the area of “business strategy and digitalization” through 4 contributions – both conceptual and empirical – that contribute to the understanding of the so-called “digital transformation” and its implications for both scholars and practitioners.     

Brief case: Shareholder dominance—Time to ask if the emperor has any clothes

The Corporate governance and short-termism debates are both linked to the role of shareholders in business. George Binney has been working on these issues and believes strongly that ‘creation of wealth for shareholders’ is an inappropriate purpose for many companies. He recognizes that companies must provide shareholders with a competitive return for the risks they take in the same way that a company must provide customers with competitive products. But he rejects the current vogue for making shareholder satisfaction the guiding purpose of business.     

The future for pharmaceuticals in a health care crisis.

When an industry reaches a turning point, everyone in it is drawn into the turmoil. Not that it happens frequently, but most industries pass more than one major turning point in the course of an executive career of average length. The experience is unsettling--especially if preceded by a general reluctance to anticipate it or its consequences. Corporate strategy is usually concerned above all with the competitive positioning of a company within an industry or, if diversified, in a number of industries. To this two-dimensional picture, which takes the company and its competitors as the main variables, we need to add the changing background of the industry itself: a third dimension that challenges the powers of adaptation of all the competitors. It compels them to acknowledge as real the forces that are unleashed by time as industries mature and society changes. This paper explores the turning points that have occurred during the past 30 years in one particular industry--pharmaceuticals--and seeks to distil from it a number of lessons that may be relevant to industrial strategy in a wider framework.     

Strategic intent in the management of the green environment within SMEs: An analysis of the UK screen-printing sector

What drives the environmental behaviour of companies is an under-researched and under-developed area of study, particularly in the context of small and medium enterprises (SMEs). This article investigates to what extent the responses by UK screen-printing companies to pressures to improve their environmental performance represented a deliberate attempt by senior managers to provide their organisations with a strategic competitive advantage.Using both a quantitative and qualitative approach, the research shows that the environmental responses of this sector tended to be reactive, defensive and driven by – and frequently limited to – legislative compliance. Even though companies accepted that there were potential commercial benefits to be gained from environmental action, there was very little evidence to indicate that managerial decisions were motivated by strategic intent or that managerial mindsets were tuned to the notion that a proactive environmental response could offer a competitive edge. The article discusses the management implications of this lack of strategic orientation and highlights how a more innovative response by companies could provide both demand and supply side benefits.     

User segmentation of online music services using fuzzy clustering

Given the rapid growth of the Internet, companies are trying to take advantage of its offerings, differentiate themselves from their competitors and be more competitive. These objectives can be achieved by providing personalized and enhanced customer service. As different people can use an online service for different reasons, fuzzy clustering can be useful to identify homogenous groups of potential users and to develop customized strategies for each group, thus enabling companies to increase the personalization of their services and to improve their customer service. This study focuses on the online music industry and presents an application of fuzzy clustering. The results show that there exist homogeneous groups among the potential users of an online music service and that there are differences among the groups with respect to their attitudes, interests, and opinions about the service and computers.     

Environmental improvement initiatives in the coal mining industry: maximisation of the triple bottom line

Abstract

Mining is an economically important industry, which faces several environmental and social challenges. Other than operational improvement activities, mining companies are increasingly paying attention to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) and maximise social welfare to satisfy multiple stakeholders and the rise of corporate social responsible initiatives. Based on a case study analysis of coal mining companies we develop a triple bottom line (TBL) initiatives framework that provides a starting point for mining companies to develop a strategic approach to environmental improvement initiatives that can positively impact all elements of the TBL. We highlight four types of process and offset-based initiatives that are available to mining companies to reduce their GHGs, each having differential effects on elements of the TBL. Our findings suggest the importance of company-wide strategies of looking at initiatives through all rather than individual elements of the TBL. Such a strategy would provide an appropriate estimate of the costs and benefits of the initiatives and results in a balanced approach that takes care of operational improvement, reduces GHGs and improves the social welfare of people engaged in mining operations and wider society.     

An Empirical Study of the Alignment Between Manufacturing and Marketing Strategies

It is widely recognised that manufacturing can be a formidable competitive weapon if equipped and managed properly, and that to achieve this success a company must have the correct alignment of manufacturing and marketing strategies. The authors considered there to be a need for empirical research into the effect of such methods within industry today. Their research was based on two questionnaires: the first was sent to 319 companies looking at levels of integration, the second to 20 of the responding companies concentrating on the development process and content of their individual strategies. Known models, internal integration and formal procedures were also investigated, none of which seem to be fully functional within any of the companies contacted. It became evident that the size of the company must be taken into consideration when formulating development plans, and that communication, cross-functional teams and formal product development techniques are essential to the success of any marketing strategy.     

Environmental proactivity and business performance: an empirical analysis

This paper analyses the relationship between environmental proactivity and business performance on a sample of 186 industrial companies. This relationship is approached by studying a bundle of relationships between different dimensions or manifestations of environmental proactivity and different measures of business performance. The analysis in part supports the idea that environmental management can bring about competitive opportunities for companies, although it also reveals that some environmental practices produce negative effects. It is thus concluded that there is no one single response for the question of whether environmental proactivity has positive effects on business performance and that this relationship must be disaggregated into more specific and concrete relationships.     

Uncertainty in competitive bidding – a framework for product–service systems

Owing to servitisation, manufacturing companies are increasingly required to compete through the provision of services around their products. The contracts for these services are often allocated through competitive bidding where the potential suppliers submit a price bid to the customer. The pricing decision is influenced by various uncertainties. This article proposes a conceptual framework depicting these influencing uncertainties on the bidding strategy. This framework is based on three empirical studies with industry investigating different viewpoints on the decision-making process. The intention is to support the pricing decision when competitively bidding for a service contract. The framework can be applied to specific competitive bidding situations to identify the influencing uncertainties, model them and depict their influences on the pricing decision.     

Some aspects of price strategy

A firm's success, within a rapidly growing and dynamic market, depends upon its ability to respond to market demand and to react to competitive forces. A key factor determining success is the pricing policy employed by the firm. Product pricing, however, is not simple; supply and demand, as well as the interaction and reaction of competitors, must be taken into consideration. By simulating a competitive market environment, however, a firm should be able to evaluate different pricing strategies prior to employing a strategy in practice. The goal of this research was to propose a simulation model to serve this purpose. Particularly, the objective was to demonstrate that if an industry can be characterized as one in which cost as well as price decline with cumulative volume, a pricing policy leading to market dominance exists. A simulation model is desirable for evaluating the proper pricing strategy for achieving such a market position.     

Challenges and solutions for marketing in a digital era

Internet usage continues to explode across the world with digital becoming an increasingly important source of competitive advantage in both B2C and B2B marketing. A great deal of attention has been focused on the tremendous opportunities digital marketing presents, with little attention on the real challenges companies are facing going digital. In this study, we present these challenges based on results of a survey among a convenience sample of 777 marketing executives around the globe. The results reveal that filling “talent gaps”, adjusting the “organizational design”, and implementing “actionable metrics” are the biggest improvement opportunities for companies across sectors.     

Strategy and the “business portfolio”

In this article the author goes on to develop the conclusion reached in his previous article which appeared in the December edition of Long Range Planning. These conclusions concerned the requirements for strategic success for an individual business, here they are developed into their implications for strategy development in the typical multibusiness company.It is argued that relative competitive position and growth are the two fundamental parameters which must be considered in determining the strategy that an individual business should follow when viewed within the context of the company's overall ‘business portfolio’. The likely patterns of business strategy which will lead to overall corporate success are discussed and contrasted with those which can lead to disaster.The key is that strategies should be made to differ widely from business to business, as a function of the growth and relative competitive position of each business and the company's overall resource position particularly with respect to cash. The ‘across the board’ defensive measures which many companies have adopted in recent years as their response to the pressures of inflation and recession are therefore argued to be singularly inappropriate for the long term. The ‘business portfolio’ concept provides a superior approach for developing the differentiated strategic business objectives which are necessary for any company to make the most of its opportunities.     

竞争战略对企业绩效的影响研究

本文基于中国制造业上市公司1998-2007年的财务数据,运用验证性因子分析方法识别了公司的竞争战略类型,并通过滞后变量模型分析了竞争战略对公司绩效的影响。实证结果表明:低成本战略和差异化战略均能给上市公司带来短期绩效增长,但实施低成本战略的企业的短期绩效显著优于实施差异化战略的企业;低成本战略对长期绩效有显著影响,其竞争优势具有持久性,但差异化战略对长期绩效的影响并不显著。     

供应链中具有产能限制的竞争企业中的信息共享研究

本文研究由一个供货商和两个制造商组成的二级供应链中，制造商之间的横向信息共享策略和供应商的定价问题。在模型中，上游供应商同时为下游两家制造商提供价格相同的原材料，下游制造商生产具有替代性的商品进行数量竞争，并受到相同的产能限制。以Cournot博弈为研究手段，求解了制造商的均衡订货决策和信息共享策略，分析比较了在不同的信息共享策略下制造商的利润、供应商的利润和批发价格。本文在研究制造商的信息共享策略时考虑了上游供应商的批发价格的影响。研究表明，当均衡解受到产能约束时，制造商的信息共享策略会反向。在某些情况下，完全信息共享和完全信息不共享都可能成为博弈的占优策略。上游供应商通过调整批发价格可以影响制造商的信息共享决策。该模型为上游供应商提供了一种最优定价策略，也为下游制造商提供了求解自身最优订货量和信息共享决策的方法。