How Does Product Recovery Affect Quality Choice?

We study the impact of product recovery on a firm's product quality choice, where quality is defined as an observable performance measure that increases a consumer's valuation for the product. We consider three general forms of product recovery: (i) when product recovery reuses (after reprocessing) quality inducing components or material (e.g., remanufacturing), (ii) when product recovery does not reuse quality inducing components or material but it is overall profitable (e.g., cell phone recycling), and (iii) when product recovery is costly (but mandated by legislation, e.g., recycling of small appliances in the European Union). Using a stylized economic model, we show that the form of product recovery, recovery cost structure, and the presence of product take‐back legislation play an important role in quality choice. Generally speaking, product recovery increases the firm's quality choice, except for some instances of recovery form (ii). In addition, we find that product take‐back legislation can lead to higher quality choice as opposed to voluntary take‐back. We further demonstrate that both the firm and the consumers benefit from recovery form (ii), while both are worse off with recovery form (iii). However, environmental implications of the three recovery modes differ from their impact on consumer surplus and firm profit. While recovery forms (i) and (iii) reduce consumption and increase environmental benefits, the same is not true with recovery form (ii), which can increase consumption, potentially resulting in higher environmental impact.     

Are Economic Development and Education Improvement Associated with Participation in Transnational Terrorism?

Using transnational terrorism data from 1980 to 2000, this study empirically examines the relationships between frequency of participation in transnational terrorism acts and economic development and education improvement. We find an inverse U‐shaped association between the frequency of various nationals acting as perpetrators in transnational terrorism acts and per capita income in their respective home countries. As per capita incomes increase from relatively low levels, frequencies of participation in transnational terrorism increase. However, at sufficiently higher levels of per capita income, further increase in per capita income is negatively associated with the rate of participation in transnational terrorism. Education improvement from elementary to secondary is positively correlated with frequency of participation in transnational terrorism events, whereas further improvement from secondary to tertiary level is negatively correlated with participation in transnational terrorism. We also find that citizens of countries with greater openness to international trade, lower degree of income inequality, greater economic freedom, larger proportion of population with tertiary education, and less religious prevalence participate in transnational terrorism events less frequently.     

供应链质量管理中抽样检验决策的非合作博弈分析

保证产品质量是建立与维护供应链企业间长期稳定合作关系的重要基础.本文提出一种供应链质量管理中抽样检验决策的非合作博弈模型,以分析供应链的下游制造商应如何根据供应商产品的质量水平确定其抽检方案.仿真结果表明,供应链背景下抽检方案不同于单个企业各自优化的制造商抽检方案.考虑供应链企业间互动关系的抽检方案与不考虑这种关系的独立抽检方案相比,能有效降低抽样成本,并使供应商和制造商获得更大的期望收益.     

The Role of Contracts on Quality and Returns to Quality in Offshore Software Development Outsourcing

In this study, we examine how the different incentive structures inherent in two primary contract types—time and materials (T&M) and fixed price (FP)—influence the quality provided by the vendor in the software development outsourcing industry. We argue that the incentive structure of FP contracts motivates a vendor to be more efficient in the software development process, which results in higher quality as compared to projects executed under a T&M contract. We thus argue that vendors consistently staff FP projects with better trained personnel because they face the most risk on these contracts, resulting in better outcomes on these projects. We extend our analysis to propose that providing higher quality is associated with higher profit margins for the vendor only for FP contracts. We develop and test these hypotheses on data collected from 100 software projects completed by a leading Indian offshore vendor. The results provide strong support for our fundamental thesis that the drivers of and returns to quality vary by contract type. We discuss the implications of our research for both researchers and practitioners.     

Let the Citizens Map—Public Participation GIS as a Planning Support System in the Helsinki Master Plan Process

Current public participation methods are laborious, reach few participants and are ineffective at gathering usable information for planning. This situation leads often to mistrust and dissatisfaction in the process and outcome. This article identifies the critical conditions for meaningful use of public participation GIS (PPGIS) tools to support the making of master plan in Helsinki. With PPGIS tools, residents’ insight of their living environment can be reached and utilized along the planning process. The results are divided to conceptual and empirical points. Whereas the conceptual points emphasize better understanding of the locus of the PPGIS tools in planning process, the empirical findings reveal new ways to study how residents’ perceptions align with the plan proposal. Though new tools, data and analysis can support representativeness, independence, early involvement, influence and transparency, planners and residents need more understanding of the benefits of these tools. The study indicates that though planners found the collected data and the analysis valuable, they still lacked the skills and institutional motivation to use the data effectively. The results point out that when PPGIS tools can be integrated to the mainstream planning practices, the tools have the ability to evolve to a more comprehensive participatory planning support system.     

A Stochastic Inventory Model With Fast‐Ship Commitments

We present a multiperiod model of a retail supply chain, consisting of a single supplier and a single retailer, in which regular replenishment occurs periodically but players have the option to support fast delivery when customers experience a stockout during a replenishment period. Because expedited shipments increase the supplier's transportation cost, and possibly production/inventory costs, the supplier typically charges a markup over and above the prevailing wholesale price for fast‐shipped items. When fast shipping is not supported, items are backordered if customers are willing to wait until the start of the next replenishment period. We characterize the retailers and the supplier's optimal stocking and production policies and then utilize our analytical framework to study how the two players respond to changes in supply chain parameters. We identify a sufficient condition such that the centralized supply chain is better off with the fast‐ship option. We find a range of markups for fast‐ship orders such that the fast‐ship option is preferred by both the supplier and the retailer in a decentralized chain. However, a markup that is a win–win for both players may not exist even when offering fast‐ship option is better for the centralized chain. Our analysis also shows that depending on how the markup is determined, greater customer participation in fast‐ship orders does not necessarily imply more profits for the two players. For some predetermined markups, the retailer's profit with the fast‐ship option is higher when more customers are willing to wait. However, the retailer may not be able to benefit from the fast‐ship option because the supplier may choose not to support the fast‐ship option when fast‐ship participation increases due to the fact that the fast‐ship participation rate adversely affects the initial order size.     

Idea Generation and the Role of Feedback: Evidence from Field Experiments with Innovation Tournaments

In many innovation settings, ideas are generated over time and managers face a decision about if and how to provide in‐process feedback to the idea generators about the quality of submissions. In this article, we use design contests allowing repeated entry to examine the effect of in‐process feedback on idea generation. We report on a set of field experiments using two online contest websites to compare the performance of three different feedback treatments—no feedback, random feedback, and directed feedback (i.e., in‐process feedback highly correlated with the final quality rating of the entry). We posted six logo design contests for consumer products and accepted submissions for 1 week. We provided daily feedback during the contest period using one of the three treatments. We then used a panel of target consumers to rate the quality of each idea. We find that directed feedback is associated positively with agent participation. For outcome, while directed feedback benefits the average quality of entries submitted, we don't find that relationship for the best entries—indeed, no feedback or random feedback may produce better top‐end entry quality. We also find that, under directed feedback, the variance in quality declines as the contest progresses.     

The Inherent Politics of Managing the Quality of Urban Green Spaces

Although the term ‘quality’ has a universal positive connotation and typically is framed by a focus on improvements, its application includes as well as excludes the access, values and world views of particular actors and interests. In this article, we highlight the relevance and implications of such ‘inherent politics’ through a case study of a widespread approach to operationalizing quality in urban green space management. We conclude that adoption of any quality model has both limiting and enabling implications for public participation and decision-making and that a critical stance is needed within both research and practice for the development of quality models that connect to values of broader societal relevance.     

季节性数据特征驱动的电子废弃物回收规模分解集成预测建模研究

电子废弃物回收规模预测是政府制定循环经济发展规划和有关补贴政策、企业进行资源回收价值评估和产能优化的基础。本文考虑电子废弃物回收规模季度数据的季节性数据特征可能导致传统单模型预测误差偏大、预测结果不稳定等问题，基于“分解-集成”的思想提出了季节性数据特征驱动的电子废弃物回收规模预测CH-X12/STL-X框架。首先，基于Canova-Hansen(CH)检验对电子废弃物回收规模时间序列的季节性数据特征进行识别，继而对适于进行季节性分解的时间序列采用X12乘法模型或时间序列季节性分解(Seasonal-trend Decomposition Procedure Based on Loess，STL)模型实现季节性分量提取。然后，采用Holt-Winters模型对获得的季节性分量进行预测，并以支持向量回归模型(Support Vector Regression，SVR)预测分解获得的其他分量。最后，通过对各个分量预测结果的线性求和以得到最终的预测结果。实证结果表明，提出CH-X12/STL-X预测框架能够较好地满足不同季节性数据特征驱动的时间序列预测建模需求，且较传统单模型(Holt-Winters模型、季节性差分自回归滑动平均模型、SVR模型)在预测性能上表现良好且稳定。     

我国上市公司CFO薪酬与盈余质量的相关性研究

本文研究了我国上市公司CFO薪酬与盈余质量的相关性.研究发现,随着我国上市公司治理机制的不断完善,上市公司逐步建立起了以盈余为业绩指标的CFO薪酬激励机制.通过文章逐层递进的研究,我们发现我国上市公司CFO薪酬激励契约显著地区别反映了盈余中的非经常性损益和经常性损益,但是却未能有效地区别反映经常性损益中的应计项目和经营性现金流,存在类似"功能锁定"的现象.进一步细分研究样本后,我们发现由于盈余管理上市公司CFO薪酬激励契约对非经常性损益和经常性损益的不合理权重赋值,扭亏上市公司的CFO薪酬激励契约反而刺激了CFO进行盈余管理.根据研究我们认为,解决CFO薪酬激励契约对应计项目和经营性现金流的"功能锁定"现象,改进盈余管理上市公司CFO薪酬激励契约成为目前我国上市公司完善CFO薪酬激励机制的两个重要任务.     

Planning Your Way to Job Growth

This paper examines the impact of comprehensive community planning on job growth in a US setting. Comprehensive planning is carried out in many communities, usually at the city or county level. Analyzing county-level data from the state of Georgia collected using a survey of planning professionals, we find that several aspects of planning and the subsequent implementation of the plan can have large impacts on job growth. We find that zoning standards increase job growth, but that it makes little difference how strict those zoning standards are. The largest increases in job growth can be captured simply by consistently following the adopted plan. This is likely due to the signal sent by following the plan that the local government can be trusted to keep other promises made in the process of attracting new businesses. Finally, the most innovative comprehensive plans were associated with lower job growth, at least within our 5-year post-plan study period, perhaps because already struggling communities pass innovative plans in hopes of correcting their shortcomings. The lesson our research holds for planners is that following the plan is likely more important for its success related to economic development than the particular features in the plan.     

The Effects of Changes in Participation and Group Size of Gainsharing Success

The recent diversity in the types of productivity gainsharing programs has led to the question of whether such programs are affected by moderators such as employee participation and group size. The present research reviews the literature on gainsharing and describes a study which examined productivity changes for 179 direct production employees in the six departments of a unionized manufacturing plant where gainsharing was implemented. The longitudinal time series analysis of the first twenty-nine months of the gainsharing program utilized trend analysis and hierarchical regression analysis to assess productivity changes as the program was changed from a group plan to a plantwide plan. Changes in productivity also were examined when the plan was changed from nonparticipative to participative. The results suggest that employee participation in decision making is a significant factor in productivity improvement but group size does not play a critical role in successful gainsharing programs.     

Women's political leadership participation around the world: An institutional analysis

Understanding institutional systems is critical for the advancement of women's participation in leadership in varying contexts. A unique and global analysis of the contextual factors that affect women in political leadership, this paper extends prior research in the field. This is a cross-country study where we ask, “How are societal-level institutional forces related to women's participation in political leadership?” We collected data from 8 secondary sources on 181 countries and conducted linear regression analyses with six institutional influences: the business environment, societal development, the economic environment, physical and technological infrastructure, political freedom, and culture. Results indicate that to increase the political leadership participation of women, we need to evaluate the following: customs and trade regulations, graft, the gender gap in political empowerment, public spending on education, the economic viability of the country, access to power and the internet, political freedom, and cultural variables like performance orientation, collectivism, and power distance.     

Improving Participation in Green Infrastructure Planning

Green infrastructure is a strategic planning concept that is able to address environmental, social and even economic problems by supplying a variety of benefits for society. Especially in times of public financial crises and spatial transformation, it is important to ensure that those services are high quality to guarantee that they will provide the intended benefits by integrating stakeholders’ knowledge and experience into green infrastructure planning. Active stakeholder participation leads to legitimate and informed future planning that accounts for society’s needs. This paper investigates participation approaches of six green infrastructure investments in Belgium, the UK, Germany and the Netherlands. The major aim is to explore how and when participation should take place to optimize participation in green infrastructure planning. This is achieved by surveying the stakeholders involved and conducting stakeholder discussions to identify their views on the participation approaches employed and their integration into the planning process. We found that stakeholders were generally satisfied with how they were involved but desired a broader and more tailored mix of approaches. Furthermore, we found several Arnstein gaps, which lead us to conclude by suggesting recommendations that are helpful for successful participation in green infrastructure planning.     

An Ecological Model for Quantitative Risk Assessment for Schistosomiasis: The Case of a Patchy Environment in the Coastal Tropical Area of Northeastern Brazil

We developed a stochastic model for quantitative risk assessment for the Schistosoma mansoni (SM) parasite, which causes an endemic disease of public concern. The model provides answers in a useful format for public health decisions, uses data and expert opinion, and can be applied to any landscape where the snail Biomphalaria glabrata is the main intermediate host (South and Central America, the Caribbean, and Africa). It incorporates several realistic and case‐specific features: stage‐structured parasite populations, periodic praziquantel (PZQ) drug treatment for humans, density dependence, extreme events (prolonged rainfall), site‐specific sanitation quality, environmental stochasticity, monthly rainfall variation, uncertainty in parameters, and spatial dynamics. We parameterize the model through a real‐world application in the district of Porto de Galinhas (PG), one of the main touristic destinations in Brazil, where previous studies identified four parasite populations within the metapopulation. The results provide a good approximation of the dynamics of the system and are in agreement with our field observations, i.e., the lack of basic infrastructure (sanitation level and health programs) makes PG a suitable habitat for the persistence and growth of a parasite metapopulation. We quantify the risk of SM metapopulation explosion and quasi‐extinction and the time to metapopulation explosion and quasi‐extinction. We evaluate the sensitivity of the results under varying scenarios of future periodic PZQ treatment (based on the Brazilian Ministry of Health's plan) and sanitation quality. We conclude that the plan might be useful to slow SM metapopulation growth but not to control it. Additional investments in better sanitation are necessary.     

Entwicklung ländlicher Kommunen

Due to a revision of the land utilisation plan the town Lichtenberg had initiated a civic participation. After four official workshops the citizens decided to continue on their own. The article describes a best practice example of a citizen’s action committee. The citizens develop concepts and work pro bono for their community. Their aim is to prepare the town for future challenges. The citizen’s action committee works closely together with the town’s council. In the meantime there are three projects that have been finished successfully. One project–the development of a shared vision–is described more detailed. The author summarizes experiences that could be beneficial for other citizen’s action committees.     

Pricing cloud services—the impact of broadband quality

In the last few years, adoption of cloud computing has shown a marked increase across the world. Moreover, the smaller markets, viz., Asia-Pacific, Latin America, Middle-East, etc., are expected to grow at more than the average rate for the next few years. While this is good news for cloud service providers, significant obstacles to cloud adoption still remain a major cause of concern, for example, the quality of broadband services. As the quality of broadband services is not uniform across the different geographies, pricing of cloud services must take this non-uniformity into account. This paper provides managerial guidelines for cloud service providers on pricing their offerings. We develop optimal pricing strategies for a typical cloud service provider by modeling the utility of a customer of cloud services as a function of two vectors. The first vector is a set of parameters which contribute positively to the utility of a customer, and the second vector is a set of parameters which have a negative effect on the utility. We explore two pricing plans: usage based and fixed fee plan; determine the conditions under which customers would select one plan over another, and discuss the significance of these conditions for cloud service providers.     

Risk: For Whom? Representations of Mining Activity by Different Social Actors in the Molango Manganese District of Hidalgo,Mexico

Previous studies have shown high levels of manganese exposure and neurocognitive damage in the population living in the mining zone in Molango, Mexico. One of the objectives of the Intersectoral Group on Environmental Management for the mining district has been to provide public participation in the risk management plan. To achieve this, it is important to know how the different social actors represent the mining activity. The objectives of this study were to characterize the social representations of the mining activity by different social actors. A qualitative design was used based on in‐depth interviews of residents, public officials, and a mining company representative. The analysis was conducted according to themes for each group of actors. Essentially, distinct social representations of the different mining activities were identified. Residents viewed mining activities as synonymous with contamination and, therefore, as having affected all areas of their environment, health, and daily life. These activities were seen as a collective risk. The public officials and the mining company held that there was no evidence of harm and saw mining activities as a generator of regional development. Harm to health and the environment were seen as a stance taken by the communities in order to obtain economic benefits from the company. These images of the “other” are shaped by social, political, and cultural factors. They make it difficult for the actors to reach cooperative agreements and thereby affect progress on the risk management plan. Decisionmakers need to take these differences into account when promoting social participation.     

Measuring management quality in the factory

The last decade has seen a growing consensus that manufacturing matters. The factory as the producing unit is the core of the firm's manufacturing activities. However, even now, it is not agreed on or even fully understood what constitutes a well-managed factory. This article attempts to create a causal model of management quality in the plant, identifying key managerial levers for improving plant performance. The model is based on an integrated view of three core processes: supply chain, product and process development, and strategy deployment. We postulate that the joint performance of the three processes is determined by the quality with which they are managed. Management quality is operationalized as consisting of six types of action: delegation (or decentralization), integration (or coordination), measurement, employee participation, communication, and employee development.This management quality model has been applied to the design of the Top Usine 1995 Best Factory Award administered in cooperation with the French weekly L'Usine Nouvelle. Data collected from participating plants do substantiate our view that plant performance is substantially driven by management quality: the six management quality dimensions are shown to be statistically linked to performance improvement rates in the plant, and we provide further evidence of this link by detailing the case example of the award winner. Our survey also shows that supply management appears to be a common problem area for the factories participating in the Top Usine award, including the best ones.