Competitive analysis of bi-directional non-preemptive conversion

In an online conversion problem a player is converting one asset into another, e.g. dollars to yen, based on a finite sequence of unknown future conversion rates. When a new rate is announced the player must decide how many dollars (yen) to convert to yen (dollars) according to this rate. Conversion is over when the last rate has appeared. The objective is to maximize terminal wealth after conversion. In uni-directional conversion dollars are converted to yen and in bi-directional conversion not only dollars to yen but also yen to dollars may be converted. If all current wealth has to be converted at one rate we call the problem non-preemptive; if parts of the current wealth can be converted at one rate we call it preemptive. We assume that lower and upper bounds on conversion rates are given. Uni-directional preemptive and non-preemptive and bi-directional preemptive conversion is investigated in El Yaniv et al. (Proceeding 33rd annual symposium on foundations of computer science, pp 327–333, 1992, Algorithmica 30:101–139, 2001). Their results for bi-directional preemptive conversion are improved by Dannoura and Sakurai (Inf Process Lett 66:27–33, 1998). The suggested improvement is conjectured not to be optimal for bi-directional preemptive conversion. There are no results for optimal bi-directional non-preemptive conversion. We investigate the problem of bi-directional non-preemptive online conversion. We present lower bounds, upper bounds and an optimal algorithm to solve the problem. Moreover, we prove that the algorithm of Dannoura and Sakurai 1998 is not optimal for bi-directional preemptive conversion.     

Competitive analysis—Its role in purchasing

In all cases a company's perception of its strengths/ weaknesses reflects that of its view of its relative power position vis-à-vis the other parties in the system. Tecognition of power/weakness can be a stimulant to redressing the balance in the company's favour. This paper seeks to emphasize the potential for such action in supply markets, for supply markets are sources of considerable potential worthy of careful attention from corporate strategists. The paper illustrates in outline one approach to competitive analysis in supply markets. The approach is not intended to have universal application. However, it should suggest a framework which can be tailored to most situations where input costs are a significant element in output revenue.     

加拿大企业全球竞争战略探析

在关税与非关贸易壁垒不断降低和政府管制逐渐放松的今天,企业全球化浪潮正愈演愈烈。本文从加拿大企业全球竞争战略出发,对加拿大企业在国际市场上获得巨大成功的经验进行分析,以便对我国企业的国际经营有所借鉴。     

Competitive analysis for make-to-order scheduling with reliable lead time quotation

This paper makes extended studies on the discrete problem of online scheduling and reliable lead time quotation (discrete Q-SLTQ) introduced by Keskinocak et al. (Manag. Sci. 47(2):264–279, 2001). We first relax the assumption on revenue function from a linear decreasing function to any decreasing function. We present an online deterministic strategy which is optimal in competitiveness for concave revenue functions. The above results are further extended to the continuous Q-SLTQ model where orders are released at arbitrary time points. For the discrete Q-SLTQ problem, if orders are with nonuniform lengths, we prove the nonexistence of online strategies with bounded competitive ratios; otherwise if orders are with unit length but various weights, we present an optimal online strategy.     

Competitive analysis for two-option online leasing problem under sharing economy

With the booming development of sharing economy, decision makers must consider the effect when making decisions with uncertain demands. In the leasing problem, people are faced with several leasing options. Participating in the shared leasing option can reduce the cost of the lessee, which makes it a good choice. This paper considers the online leasing option under sharing economy. By applying competitive analysis to the two-option online leasing problem, the optimal competitive ratios of the deterministic and randomized strategies with market interest rate are obtained, respectively. The theoretical results show that the strategies’ competitive performance is improved under sharing economy. Furthermore, numerical examples are performed to illustrate that considering the shared option has a significant influence on the two-option online leasing problem.

     

降低竞争强度的多点竞争协作战略

多点竞争下企业的互动更加复杂,企业间的竞争强度在企业选择不同的竞争战略时会有不同的结果。本文从研究多点竞争的企业互动角度,提出一种能够降低竞争强度的心照不宣的协作战略,并进一步分析多点竞争协作战略缓和企业间竞争强度的机制和因素。     

From Temporary Competitive Advantage to Sustainable Competitive Advantage

Both industrial organization theory (IO) and the resource‐based view of the firm (RBV) have advanced our understanding of the antecedents of competitive advantage but few have attempted to verify the outcome variables of competitive advantage and the persistence of such outcome variables. Here by integrating both IO and RBV perspectives in the analysis of competitive advantage at the firm level, our study clarifies a conceptual distinction between two types of competitive advantage ? temporary competitive advantage and sustainable competitive advantage ? and explores how firms transform temporary competitive advantage into sustainable competitive advantage. Testing of the developed hypotheses, based on a survey of 165 firms from Taiwan's information and communication technology industry, suggests that firms with a stronger market position can only attain a better outcome of temporary competitive advantage whereas firms possessing a superior position in technological resources or capabilities can attain a better outcome of sustainable competitive advantage. More importantly, firms can leverage a temporary competitive advantage as an outcome of market position to improving their technological resource and capability position, which in turn can enhance their sustainable competitive advantage.     

从竞争优势到竞争优势群

在当今的超强竞争时代,环境的动态性日益成为影响企业竞争成败的关键因素,从动态的角度分析竞争优势成为当务之急。本文从动态的角度构建了竞争优势群分析框架,对竞争优势的维持、增强、权衡和更新等问题进行了研究。     

Competitive Bundling

This paper proposes a framework for studying competitive (pure) bundling in an oligopoly market. We find that under fairly general conditions, relative to separate sales, bundling raises market prices, benefits firms, and harms consumers when the number of firms is above a threshold (which can be small). This is in contrast to the findings in the duopoly case on which the existing literature often focuses. Our analysis also sheds new light on how consumer valuation dispersion affects price competition more generally.     

The TOWS matrix—A tool for situational analysis

This article has two main purposes. One is to review general considerations in strategic planning and the second to introduce the TOWS Matrix for matching the environmental threats and opportunities with the company's weaknesses and especially its strengths. These factors per se are not new; what is new is systematically identifying relationships between these factors and basing strategies on them. There is little doubt that strategic planning will gain greater prominence in the future. Any organization—whether military, product-oriented, service-oriented or even governmental—to remain effective, must use a rational approach toward anticipating, responding to and even altering the future environment.     

Competitive information systems

The problem of keeping abreast of relevant competitive developments for strategic purposes is common to many organizations. In this article the authors describe a system which they have developed and which is currently in operation which they believe can prove beneficial in meeting this need. They believe that their system provides competitive data in a useful form. Also it ensures that information, and not data, are processed and provided for planners and managers to support their decision-making.     

On the complexity and approximation of non-unique probe selection using d-disjunct matrix

In this paper, we studied the MINimum-d-Disjunct Submatrix (MIN-d-DS), which can be used to select the minimum number of non-unique probes for viruses identification. We prove that MIN-d-DS is NP-hard for any fixed d. Using d-disjunct matrix, we present an O(log k)-approximation algorithm where k is an upper bound on the maximum number of targets hybridized to a probe. We also present a (1+(d+1)log n)-approximation algorithm to identify at most d targets in the presence of experimental errors. Our approximation algorithms also yield a linear time complexity for the decoding algorithms. The research of T. Znati was supported in part by National Science Foundation under grant CCF-0548895.     

Tourist profiles using discriminant analysis

How similar are tourists from the audiences of two or more advertising vehicles? The method of N-way multiple discriminant analysis was used for predicting magazine readership from key tourist variables from two samples of 300 coupon inquiries. Results of the analysis indicated similar tourist profiles existed among the readerships of the three magazines. Application of the method used in this study may be useful in the development of promotional themes to attract tourists from selected advertising vehicles and in identifying unique tourism characteristics for particular vehicles.     

Competitive strategies in retailing

A strategy formulation procedure for retailers is described. The changing retail environment has brought problems for some traditional forms of retailing, and indeed failure for some stores, but it has also brought opportunities, particularly for the store management that has been prepared to consider different ways of selling.     

Competitive analysis of online machine rental and online parallel machine scheduling problems with workload fence

In this paper, we introduce the concept of “workload fence" into online machine rental and machine scheduling problems. With the knowledge of workload fence, online algorithms acquire the information of a finite number of first released jobs in advance. The concept originates from the frozen time fence in the domain of master scheduling in materials management. The total processing time of the jobs foreseen, corresponding to a finite number of jobs, is called workload fence, which is irrelevant to the job sequence. The remaining jobs in the sequence, however, can only become known on their arrival. This work aims to reveal whether the knowledge of workload fence helps to boost the competitive performance of deterministic online algorithms. For the online machine rental problem, we prove that the competitiveness of online algorithms can be improved with a sufficiently large workload fence. We further propose a best online algorithm for the corresponding scenario. For online parallel machine scheduling with workload fence, we give a positive answer to the above question for the case where the workload fence is equal to the length of the longest job. We also show that the competitiveness of online algorithms may not be improved even with a workload fence strictly larger than the largest length of a job. The results help one manager to make a better decision regarding the tradeoff between the performance improvement of online algorithms and the cost caused to acquire the knowledge of workload fence.

     

Competitive industrial marketing strategies

This paper argues that for firms marketing industrial goods, the terms—system, product, service and commodity—are better employed to characterize the way the firm competes rather than any intrinsic attributes of what it markets. It is shown that the same hardware can be transacted as a system, service, product of commodity, and the nature of the most popular transaction changes over time. The nature of these shifts and how the firm needs to match its strategy to reflect them are discussed, and the special case of diversified firms in industries subject to rapid transaction shifts is taken up. It is suggested that for such firms a divisional structure based on the type of transaction—‘transaction divisions’—rather than the conventional Product Type divisions may make the firm better able not only to match its strategy to such shifts but also better able to anticipate them.     

Investment and Competitive Matching

We study markets in which agents first make investments and are then matched into potentially productive partnerships. Equilibrium investments and the equilibrium matching will be efficient if agents can simultaneously negotiate investments and matches, but we focus on markets in which agents must first sink their investments before matching. Additional equilibria may arise in this sunk‐investment setting, even though our matching market is competitive. These equilibria exhibit inefficiencies that we can interpret as coordination failures. All allocations satisfying a constrained efficiency property are equilibria, and the converse holds if preferences satisfy a separability condition. We identify sufficient conditions (most notably, quasiconcave utilities) for the investments of matched agents to satisfy an exchange efficiency property as well as sufficient conditions (most notably, a single crossing property) for agents to be matched positive assortatively, with these conditions then forming the core of sufficient conditions for the efficiency of equilibrium allocations.     

A dual signal model of pride displays in organizations

Pride is often felt in the work context, but should it be shown to others? Pride displays communicate one’s own success and status, but can show a lack of interpersonal sensitivity. This double-edged nature of pride is not fully understood in organizational contexts; we do not know under what conditions pride displays are beneficial, or detrimental, to career advancement, team dynamics, and leader influence. In this article we integrate signaling theory with sensory habituation and sensitization concepts to develop a new contextualized model of pride at work. Specifically, we propose that pride displays are signals for two primary social judgments that have important implications for organizations: competence and warmth. We make the case that, while pride display under conditions of information asymmetry (lack of information about the sender) signals competence, repeated displays hasten habituation to that signal and instead foster sensitization to a (low) interpersonal warmth signal. Furthermore, additional characteristics of the sender, receiver and audience determine the signaling of these two social judgments from pride. This model advances theory by contextualizing the social function of pride, and suggests new research directions for emotion regulation, impression management, and the rise and fall in social hierarchies, with implications for newcomers, teamwork, and leadership in today’s workplace.     

How leaders' emotional displays shape followers' organizational citizenship behavior

We examined the effects of happy and angry expressions of leaders on followers' organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). OCB involves behaviors that benefit an organization, but fall outside of formal job requirements and reward structures (Bateman & Organ, 1983). We show that leaders' emotional displays play a role in encouraging or discouraging OCB. In contrast to previous evidence that anger displays can increase follower motivation and in-role performance, Study 1 (a scenario study among employees of various companies) revealed a decrease in willingness to perform OCB after a leader expressed anger rather than happiness. In Study 2 (a lab experiment involving university students), participants expended less effort working overtime after being confronted with an angry rather than a happy leader. In both studies, the detrimental effects of anger were stronger when the anger was perceived as inappropriate. We conclude that anger may decrease OCB, especially when the target considers it inappropriate.     

Comparing products using data envelopment analysis

Using an application of linear programming known as Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), a method is described to compare products which vary in excellence along a number of dimensions, and for each of which there might be a number of associated “costs”. The method is illustrated by comparing published benchmarks of 37 computer printers. Potential uses of a DEA analysis of products might be: to assist corporate buyers who may need to reconcile a diversity of present and future uses in one standardised purchase; in competitor analysis; in determining unexplored market niches; and as a normative model of product excellence against which product purchasing behaviour could be compared.