The cost of using stationary inventory policies when demand is non-stationary

Non-stationary stochastic demands are very common in industrial settings with seasonal patterns, trends, business cycles, and limited-life items. In such cases, the optimal inventory control policies are also non-stationary. However, due to high computational complexity, non-stationary inventory policies are not usually preferred in real-life applications. In this paper, we investigate the cost of using a stationary policy as an approximation to the optimal non-stationary one. Our numerical study points to two important results: (i) Using stationary policies can be very expensive depending on the magnitude of demand variability. (ii) Stationary policies may be efficient approximations to optimal non-stationary policies when demand information contains high uncertainty, setup costs are high and penalty costs are low.     

The effect of alliance experience and intellectual capital on the value creation of international strategic alliances

This paper investigates the effects of intellectual capital (IC), alliance experience and their interaction on the value creation of international strategic alliances (ISAs). Based on a sample of ISAs formed by US firms, we find that firms with a higher level of IC receive greater announcement-period wealth gains. In addition, the empirical results suggest experience positively enhances the wealth effect of ISAs. Finally, we find a significant positive interaction effect between experience and IC on the wealth creation of ISAs. The results demonstrate the importance of considering the joint effects of IC and experience in assessing the value creation of ISAs.     

Multiobjective optimisation of production,distribution and capacity planning of global supply chains in the process industry

The performance of a supply chain should usually be measured by multiple criteria. We address production, distribution and capacity planning of global supply chains considering cost, responsiveness and customer service level simultaneously. A multiobjective mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) approach is developed with total cost, total flow time and total lost sales as key objectives. Also, two strategies to expand the formulation plants’ capacities are considered in the model. The ε-constraint method and lexicographic minimax method are used as solution approaches to tackle the multiobjective problem. Finally, a numerical example is investigated to demonstrate the applicability of the proposed model and solution approaches.     

Introduction to Special Section on Sensitivity Analysis and Summary of NCSU/USDA Workshop on Sensitivity Analysis

This guest editorial is a summary of the NCSU/USDA Workshop on Sensitivity Analysis held June 11–12, 2001 at North Carolina State University and sponsored by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Office of Risk Assessment and Cost Benefit Analysis. The objective of the workshop was to learn across disciplines in identifying, evaluating, and recommending sensitivity analysis methods and practices for application to food‐safety process risk models. The workshop included presentations regarding the Hazard Assessment and Critical Control Points (HACCP) framework used in food‐safety risk assessment, a survey of sensitivity analysis methods, invited white papers on sensitivity analysis, and invited case studies regarding risk assessment of microbial pathogens in food. Based on the sharing of interdisciplinary information represented by the presentations, the workshop participants, divided into breakout sessions, responded to three trigger questions: What are the key criteria for sensitivity analysis methods applied to food‐safety risk assessment? What sensitivity analysis methods are most promising for application to food safety and risk assessment? and What are the key needs for implementation and demonstration of such methods? The workshop produced agreement regarding key criteria for sensitivity analysis methods and the need to use two or more methods to try to obtain robust insights. Recommendations were made regarding a guideline document to assist practitioners in selecting, applying, interpreting, and reporting the results of sensitivity analysis.     

Distinguishing traumatic, vicarious and routine operational stressor exposure and attendant adverse consequences in a sample of police officers

Problems in studying occupational stress within the police service are identified and the paucity of work on operational duties as potential stressors are discussed. The present study reports the results of a factor analysis of operational stressors (N = 601 serving British police officers) that revealed three factors: exposure to death and disaster; violence and injury; sexual crime. These were demonstrated to be reliable scales and were included in logistic regression models together with a range of demographic and psychological variables. Models were applied to men and women separately, which showed there to be different predictors of the likelihood of suffering distress (measured by the General Health Questionnaire, GHQ) in terms of the officer's gender and operational role. Overall the model for women officers was better at predicting psychological distress than that for men. These findings are related to aspects of the police occupational culture. Further discussion is offered that conceptualizes police operational stressors as traumatic, routine and vicarious. Finally, some implications are drawn for the provision of stress intervention in the light of this differentiation.     

Power,authority and legitimacy

Management, human resources, organization, control, leadership, etc., all seem to be just so many euphemisms for power, and this suggests a discourse of management and organization that calls things by their proper name. This paper on the contrary stresses the need to resolve the concept of ‘power’ itself into more differentiated notions, and proposes that clarification may be derived from distinctions once explicit in the vocabulary of Classical antiquity, but lost in modern European languages. It argues that nothing but confusion in thinking about organizations, management and legitimation can result from the failure to recognize that the phenomena this vocabulary identifies and distinguishes are irreducibly different.     

Criteria for selecting a production control philosophy

Logistic objectives constitute a compromise between having short leadtimes and a low volume of work in progress on the one hand and a high resource loading and due date obligation on the other. Miscellaneous production planning approaches offered today provide different combinations of logistic objectives for satisfying a manufacturing strategy. To combine the strength of the various approaches into a unified system, a new approach based on a dynamic and distributed production planning methodology is proposed. To customize the approach, various analyses and specifications have to be made and for that reason some important characteristics and criteria for analysing production control philosophies will be given.     

Employees' perceptions of organizational restructuring: the role of social support

Organizational change and restructuring is often perceived as leading to increased occupational stress, impacting negatively on the psychological well-being of employees. This pragmatic study investigates the role of social support and dispositional affect as moderators of role stress post-restructuring for employees in a public utility company. A total of 176 employees, including 37 managers, 60 graded staff and 78 industrial staff completed a self-report questionnaire, approximately 1 year postrestructuring, retrospectively assessing role conflict, ambiguity, overload and positive and negative feedback pre- and post-restructuring. Results suggested that overall role stress increased for managers/ senior officers and graded staff, but not for industrial staff. Social support was linked with lower role stress, more positive feedback and less negative feedback at post-restructuring. For certain role stressors this impact was moderated by dispositional affect, but the effect was not consistent across occupational groups. Positive affect enhanced the effect of manager support in reducing role conflict for graded staff, and the effect of co-worker support in increasing positive feedback and reducing negative feedback for industrial staff. Findings suggest that managers should pay particular attention to support and feedback for employees during periods of chronic occupational stress following organizational restructuring.     

The Danish psychosocial work environment and symptoms of stress: the main, mediating and moderating role of sense of coherence

The aim of this cross-sectional study was to explore the main, mediating and moderating role of sense of coherence (SOC) on stress symptoms and on the association between perceived psychosocial work environment and stress symptoms. The sample includes 2053 Danish employees from 52 workplaces. Hierarchical regression models were applied for each measure of stress. The results strongly supported the presence of a main effect for SOC. People with high levels of SOC experienced fewer stress symptoms. A mediating effect of SOC was also supported. Thus, SOC in part explained the association between work environment and stress symptoms. In addition, some support for a moderating effect of SOC was found, suggesting that people with higher SOC coped more efficiently with work environmental strain that people with lower SOC. Taken together the regression models explained 11-32% of the variance in stress symptoms. The results suggest that measures of individual factors such as SOC should be included in analyses of the effects of work environmental factors on stress and well-being.     

Control at work: a generalized resource factor for the prevention of musculoskeletal symptoms?

During the last two decades two potent groups of predictors for work-related musculoskeletal problems have been identified: physical work load and poor psychosocial working conditions. However, little is known about their combined effects. In this study the buffering effect of control at work with respect to the negative effects of psychological demands and physical work load on musculoskeletal problems is examined. All study variables were sampled from 431 people working in geriatric nursing homes in Germany by means of questionnaires. Main effects and interactions were tested with multiple regression analysis. The results showed that control buffered the effects of high psychological demands, but not of high physical work load; the buffering effect of control was observed only when physical work load was low. The combined effects of demands and physical work load were over-additive. Thus, the power of different predictors for musculoskeletal symptoms depended on the level of other predictors. This suggests that the efficiency of certain strategies for the prevention of musculoskeletal problems is likely to depend on the level of risk factors, with different strategies being appropriate for different levels of risk.     

The social construction of the meaning of acute stressors: a qualitative study of the personal accounts of police officers using a stress counselling service

The police profession is one in which acute stressors are encountered more frequently than in other occupations. Using the personal accounts of 35 police officers attending an in-house stress counselling clinic, the aim of the present study was to provide a qualitative examination of how the institutional context of policing influenced the ways in which acute stressors signified to individual police officers experiencing felt distress. Using the framework of Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy as an analytical tool, it is argued that beliefs contributing to the experience of felt distress are related to the way in which policing as both an identity and an activity is constructed through the police organizational culture. Not only do these constructions influence the ways in which officers perceive themselves and their environments, but they also operate at the collective level to 'normalize' some emotional responses and to 'pathologize' others which, it is argued, could impact upon the outcomes of interventions such as stress counselling.     

The moderating role of social support in Karasek's job strain model

This paper examines whether social support is a boundary-determining criterion in the job strain model of Karasek (1979). The particular focus is the extent to which different sources of social support, work overload and task control influence job satisfaction, depersonalization and supervisor assessments of work performance. Hypotheses are tested using prospective survey data from 80 clerical staff in a university setting. Results revealed 3-way interactions among levels of support (supervisor, co-worker, non-work), perceived task control and work overload on levels of work performance and employee adjustment (self-report). After controlling for levels of negative affect in all analyses, there was evidence that high levels of supervisor support mitigated against the negative effects of high strain jobs on levels of job satisfaction and reduced reported levels of depersonalization. Moreover, high levels of non-work support and co-worker support also mitigated against the negative effects of high strain jobs on levels of work performance. The results are discussed in terms of the importance of social support networks both at, and beyond, the work context.     

Job insecurity, coping resources and personality dispositions in occupational strain

This paper presents research on the relationships between the work-related stressor of perceived job insecurity and various indicators of occupational strain, taking into account employees' personality dispositions (trait negative and positive affectivity) and coping resources. Respondents were 222 Australian public servants surveyed during organizational restructuring that involved downsizing and threat to job certainty. The research was formulated within an adaptation of Osipow, Doty, and Spokane's (1985) framework of stress-strain-coping that included the possible direct as well as moderating effects of personality dispositions in reporting occupational strain (Parkes, 1990). Findings from hierarchical regression analyses indicate consistent significant independent effects of personality dispositions, coping resources and perceived job insecurity on various indicators of strain. There was also support for the moderating roles of negative affectivity and self-care in the relation between perceived job insecurity and physical strain. Implications for the role of dispositional factors, especially negative affectivity, and the utility of various coping resources in accounting for occupational strain in times of threatened job security are discussed.     

Comparison of Chemical Screening and Ranking Approaches: The Waste Minimization Prioritization Tool versus Toxic Equivalency Potentials

Chemical screening in the United States is often conducted using scoring and ranking methodologies. Linked models accounting for chemical fate, exposure, and toxicological effects are generally preferred in Europe and in product Life Cycle Assessment. For the first time, a comparison is presented in this article of two of the prominent, but structurally different methodologies adopted to help screen and rank chemicals and chemical emissions data. Results for 250 chemicals are presented, with a focus on 12 chemicals of interest in the United Nations Environment Programme's Persistent Organic Pollutants global treaty negotiations. These results help to illustrate the significance of described structural differences and to assess the correlation between the methodologies. The scope of the comparison was restricted here to human health, although the insights would be equally useful in the context of the health of ecosystems. Illustrating the current types of chemical screening and emissions comparison approaches, the relative significance of the scenario and structural differences of the Waste Minimization Prioritization Tool (WMPT) and the Toxic Equivalency Potential (TEP) methodologies are analyzed. The WMPT facilitates comparison in terms of key physical-chemical properties. Measures for Persistence, Bioaccumulation, and Toxicity (PBT) are calculated. Each PBT measure is scored and then these scores are added to provide a single measure of relative concern. TEPs account for chemical fate, multipathway exposure, and toxicity using a model-based approach. This model structure is sometimes considered to provide a less subjective representation of environmental mechanisms, and, hence, an improved basis for screening. Nevertheless, a strong relationship exists between the two approaches and both have their limitations.     

Job stress, job strain, and psychological withdrawal among Dutch university staff: towards a dualprocess model for the effects of occupational stress

This study examined the antecedents of job strain (emotional exhaustion, health complaints) and withdrawal behaviour (e.g. lowered organizational commitment) among a cross-sectional sample of 131 academic staff members of the law department of a large Dutch university. Conservation of resources theory (Hobfoll, 1989) provided the theoretical background for this study. Strains and withdrawal behaviours were expected to be most prominent among those who reported having few resources and/or who reported high job demands. Structural equation modelling revealed that this was indeed the case. As predicted, differential patterns of effects emerged for job demands and job resources. Analysis of the effects of four job-specific stressors revealed that especially the structural aspects of a staff member's teaching task (e.g. the number of students in their classes) contributed strongly to perceived job demands. Theoretical and practical implications of the study are discussed.     

Dermal Uptake of 18 Dilute Aqueous Chemicals: In Vivo Disappearance‐Method Measures Greatly Exceed In Vitro‐Based Predictions

Average rates of total dermal uptake (K_up) from short‐term (e.g., bathing) contact with dilute aqueous organic chemicals (DAOCs) are typically estimated from steady‐state in vitro diffusion‐cell measures of chemical permeability (K_p) through skin into receptor solution. Widely used (“PCR‐vitro”) methods estimate K_up by applying diffusion theory to increase K_p predictions made by a physico‐chemical regression (PCR) model that was fit to a large set of K_p measures. Here, K_up predictions for 18 DAOCs made by three PCR‐vitro models (EPA, NIOSH, and MH) were compared to previous in vivo measures obtained by methods unlikely to underestimate K_up. A new PCR model fit to all 18 measures is accurate to within approximately threefold (r = 0.91, p < 10^?5), but the PCR‐vitro predictions (r > 0.63) all tend to underestimate the K_up measures by mean factors (UF, and p value for testing UF = 1) of 10 (EPA, p < 10^?6), 11 (NIOSH, p < 10^?8), and 6.2 (MH, p = 0.018). For all three PCR‐vitro models, log(UF) correlates negatively with molecular weight (r² = 0.31 to 0.84, p = 0.017 to < 10^?6) but not with log(vapor pressure) as an additional predictor (p > 0.05), so vapor pressure appears not to explain the significant in vivo/PCR‐vitro discrepancy. Until this discrepancy is explained, careful in vivo measures of K_up should be obtained for more chemicals, the expanded in vivo database should be compared to in vitro‐based predictions, and in vivo data should be considered in assessing aqueous dermal exposure and its uncertainty.     

Systems Resilience for Multihazard Environments: Definition,Metrics, and Valuation for Decision Making

The United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction reported that the 2011 natural disasters, including the earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan, resulted in $366 billion in direct damages and 29,782 fatalities worldwide. Storms and floods accounted for up to 70% of the 302 natural disasters worldwide in 2011, with earthquakes producing the greatest number of fatalities. Average annual losses in the United States amount to about $55 billion. Enhancing community and system resilience could lead to massive savings through risk reduction and expeditious recovery. The rational management of such reduction and recovery is facilitated by an appropriate definition of resilience and associated metrics. In this article, a resilience definition is provided that meets a set of requirements with clear relationships to the metrics of the relevant abstract notions of reliability and risk. Those metrics also meet logically consistent requirements drawn from measure theory, and provide a sound basis for the development of effective decision‐making tools for multihazard environments. Improving the resiliency of a system to meet target levels requires the examination of system enhancement alternatives in economic terms, within a decision‐making framework. Relevant decision analysis methods would typically require the examination of resilience based on its valuation by society at large. The article provides methods for valuation and benefit‐cost analysis based on concepts from risk analysis and management.