AN EXTENSION OF WOLFE'S STUDY OF SIMULATION GAME COMPLEXITY*

This study is an extension of recently reported research concerning the relationships between business simulation game complexity and student perceptions of “learning,”“monotony,” and “appropriateness of challenge.” A game of intermediate-level complexity was used at two education levels. Findings from the current study are compared with findings from an earlier study's intermediate-level complexity game. A number of questions with respect to the earlier findings are raised.     

USING MANAGEMENT GAMES AS AN AID IN TEACHING MIS DESIGN

As an approach to teaching management information systems, students are required to play a management game. The students become aware of information needs through participation in the decision process of the game. The student then develops an integrated system to assist in playing this management game. This new approach, the gaming method, is considered an effective way of teaching integrated systems because the intimate interrelationships between decision-making processes and information systems can be easily illustrated.     

POM TEACHING AND RESEARCH IN THE 21st CENTURY

We offer a view of operations management in the future based on a mapping of the field's history. We discuss issues raised by this view of the future that we expect will affect those who will teach and conduct research in operations management.     

USING FISHBURN'S TECHNIQUES FOR ANALYSIS OF DECISION TREES: SOME EXAMPLES*

Techniques for the analysis of payoff matrices with “imprecise” assessment of state probabilities are applied to the analysis of decision trees in normal form. The analytical techniques, due to Peter Fishburn, are summarized and then illustrated by analyzing two decision trees. Problem I, a two state problem, provides geometrical analogs for the two most “imprecise” probability assessments and simple analytical and geometrical analogs for the least “imprecise” probability assessment. Problem II, a three state problem, illustrates the application of all four precision levels, from most “imprecise” through least “imprecise.”     

USING AN UNCERTAINTY MODEL TO ASSESS SALES RESPONSE TO ADVERTISING*

Implications of a probabilistic “random walk” model of incremental sales response to advertising are developed for various timing patterns of advertising expenditures. Maximum likelihood procedures for assessing advertising effectiveness and for estimating a decay (forgetting) rate are developed and applied to artificial data of known configuration and are used to assess the impact over time of a brochure program on mail-order sales. Results are also compared to those from alternative models involving various lag patterns in advertising effects.     

INTERNATIONAL TECHNOLOGY AND OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT: RESOURCE TOOLKIT FOR RESEARCH AND TEACHING

Increasing globalization has affected the way that firms are managed today. While its impact on competitive strategy, marketing, and finance has been well accepted and well studied, its effect on the firm's technology and operations has not. This paper provides resources for research and teaching in international technology and operations management (itom). Included are an extensive bibliography of papers and an overview of large-scale survey research initiatives in the area. By bringing together and categorizing this body of work, we hope to facilitate further work in the area and to help define ITOM'S scope.     

INTEGRATED OPERATIONS: A PROPOSAL FOR OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT TEACHING AND RESEARCH

This paper, addressed to professors of operations management (om) in research institutions, suggests that the long-term academic viability of our discipline requires the generation of a theory uniquely associated with the practice of OM. Such a theory will rest on foundations laid by other disciplines, but must find its own unique synthesis that attends to the problems of OM practice. The paper proposes a framework that recognizes physics, social psychology and philosophy as foundational disciplines for an integrative theoryof OM and suggests which concepts from those disciplines may find voice in such a theory.     

THE IMPACT OF PROBABILISTIC INFORMATION ON DECISION BEHAVIOR AND PERFORMANCE IN AN EXPERIMENTAL GAME

This research presents the results of a longitudinal experiment using experimental gaming. The results suggest that probabilistic information did change decision behavior and improve subject performance in the experiment. Moreover, there appeared to be a learning effect associated with the use of probabilistic information. Finally, the source of information (externally supplied by the researcher or generated by the subjects themselves) had an impact on decision behavior and performance in the experiment.     

QUANTITATIVE TECHNIQUES IN MARKETING: AN ASSESSMENT OF TEACHING AND USAGE PATTERNS

This paper presents the perspectives of quantitative techniques in academics and practice. Based on the findings of an empirical study, the academicians and practitioners emphasize different techniques and prefer different journals for keeping abreast. This reveals the areas for curriculum improvement to orient the program toward the practitioners.     

CONVERGENCE: AN EXPERIMENTAL STUDY OF TEACHING AND LEARNING IN REPEATED GAMES

Nash equilibrium can be interpreted as a steady state where players hold correct beliefs about the other players’ behavior and act rationally. We experimentally examine the process that leads to this steady state. Our results indicate that some players emerge as teachers—those subjects who, by their actions, try to influence the beliefs of their opponent and lead the way to a more favorable outcome—and that the presence of teachers appears to facilitate convergence to Nash equilibrium. In addition to our experiments, we examine games, with different properties, from other experiments and show that teaching plays an important role in these games. We also report results from treatments in which teaching is made more difficult. In these treatments, convergence rates go down and any convergence that does occur is delayed.     

TEACHING THE INDEPENDENCE OF X AND S2 IN APPLIED STATISTICS*

In this note, the independence of X and S² is proved without the prerequisite knowledge of differential calculus. The purpose is to compensate for the lack of a text in applied statistics that proves the independence of such statistics.     

ADVERTISING AND VALUE MAXIMIZATION: AN INTEGRATIVE APPROACH *

The model developed in this paper is interdisciplinary in that we incorporate the advertising decision into the capital asset pricing model (CAPM) for valuation of risky income streams. The advertising decision involves the purchase of media services whose effects on sales (profit) are hypothesized to vary with general economic activity. As in any asset expansion, the firm purchases an income distribution with a given expected value and covariance with the economy. By consulting the CAPM, we are able to obtain a value for the income distribution associated with the advertising expenditure. By failing to account for both risk and return, those previous studies which have examined the effect of advertising on profit or valuation are, at best, incomplete. We are able to demonstrate the inappropriateness of ranking alternative advertising strategies solely on the basis of expected income.     

AN IMPLICIT/EXPLICIT APPROACH TO MULTIOBJECTIVE OPTIMIZATION WITH AN APPLICATION TO FOREST MANAGEMENT PLANNING*

Implicit utility/value maximization and explicit utility/value maximization are identified as two major classes of multiobjective optimization methods. Explicit methods have the advantage of being able to fully exploit the power of existing mathematical programming algorithms. A disadvantage is the high information burden they place on the decision maker. Implicit (i.e., interactive) methods have complementary strengths and weaknesses: they require less extensive information but do not lend themselves as easily to use with optimizing algorithms. We develop a hybrid implicit/explicit approach that attempts to combine the advantages of both by embedding within the implicit method a procedure that periodically formulates an approximate explicit representation of the multiobjective problem and then solves it optimally without user interaction. Operationally, this requires the frequent solution of two nonlinear programs. We also report on the implementation of this method in a forest management decision support system. This is a completely microcomputer-based implementation currently undergoing field testing for use in planning the timing and intensity of timber harvests on non-industrial forests in the southeastern United States. The system has been selected as a replacement for an earlier multiobjective program (Harrison and Rosenthal [28]) used by over 1,800 landowners.     

MANAGING PRODUCT VARIETY: AN INTEGRATIVE REVIEW AND RESEARCH DIRECTIONS

Variety management has emerged as a crucial dimension of successful business practice. In this paper, I first provide a framework for managerial decisions about variety. Variety‐creation decisions determine the amount, type, and timing of end‐product variety, while variety‐implementation decisions focus on the design and operation of internal processes and a supply chain to support a firm's variety‐creation strategy. I organize variety‐related decisions into four key decision themes in variety creation: 1) dimensions of variety, 2) product architecture, 3) degree of customization, and 4) timing; and three key decision themes in variety implementation: 1) process capabilities, 2) points of variegation, and 3) day‐to‐day decisions. I describe each theme and review the relevant literature on each theme, with a focus on research that provides insight to problems faced in practice. Finally, I identify untapped avenues for future research that would be of value to the practicing manager, paying special attention to interdependencies among decision themes.     

PRODUCT STRUCTURE COMPLEXITY AND MULTILEVEL LOT SIZING USING ALTERNATIVE COSTING POLICIES*

This research evaluates the effect of product structure complexity on the performance of several lot-sizing procedures in a multilevel manufacturing environment. The experiment compares two different costing policies, full value added (FVA) and marginal value added (MVA), for calculating inventory holding cost. The major finding of the research is that product structure complexity has very little effect on the performance of various lot-sizing procedures. A second finding is that when product structures with varying components per parent and stocking points for a particular end item are present, the MVA costing policy emerges as the policy of choice because it favors slightly the Silver-Meal (SM)/least-total-cost (LTC) procedures over the Wagner-Whitin (WW)/LTC procedures.     

AN ECONOMIC PRODUCTION QUANTITY MODEL WITH LEARNING AND FORGETTING CONSIDERATIONS

The focus of this work is on the effects of learning on economic production quantity in batch production systems. We assumed that both unit variable manufacturing time and setup time follow a learning curve. We modified the classical Economic Production Quantity model to incorporate these two types of learning phenomena. We also incorporated the forgetting effect in our model so that a fraction of the learning is lost between consecutive lots. We developed a dynamic program to obtain the optimal solution to the problem. We investigated the nonincreasing lot size property and used it to improve the efficiency of our dynamic program. We consider a special case of the model in which all lot sizes are assumed equal. After theoretical treatment, we carried out a computational study of the effect of assuming equal lot sizes on the optimal solutions. The results of our examples strongly indicate that the assumption of equal lot sizes not only simplifies the determination of the optimal solutions, but also provides close approximations to the optimal solutions.     

THE USES OF BUSINESS GAMING IN EDUCATION AND LABORATORY RESEARCH*

This paper reports an empirical investigation of business gaming in education and research. Subjects were approximately 200 junior and senior undergraduate students who were assigned to seven-man teams on the basis of scores on the Least Preferred Co-worker (LPC) leadership style questionnaire, and who played the Marksim business game during one academic semester. Relationships were explored between post-game perceptions of the game, team atmosphere and the leader, combinations of congruent and incongruent leadership styles, and measures of team performance. Also explored were relationships between several predictor variables (including grade point average) and measures of team performance. The results were generally disappointing in regard to business gaming as an educational tool. However, it seems that business gaming may hold promise for laboratory research in the behavioral sciences. The results of this investigation suggest that relationship-oriented and task-oriented leadership styles and combinations of these styles within hierarchically structured groups affect members' perceptions of the task and other aspects of the task environment but do not affect group performance, at least directly. These results may have significance for those interested in organizational design and the selection and development of leaders for first and second-level managerial positions.     

A NOTE ON MODELING PROJECT INTERDEPENDENCE IN RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT*

This note is concerned with the problem of resource allocation under uncertainty in a research and development laboratory. A distinction is defined between project interrelationships that are specific (or internal) to certain projects and interrelationships resulting from external environmental factors. Formulations are introduced that allow both types of interrelationships to be formally included in a resource allocation optimization model. In the case of external environmental factors, an example is presented and analyzed.     

LINEAR PROGRAMMING WITH DISCRETE STOCHASTIC RESOURCES: AN ALTERNATIVE APPROACH ACCOUNTING FOR INFEASIBILITY*

In this paper an alternative to, or extension of, the chance-constrained method of stochastic programming is presented whereby an expected cost of infeasibility is included in the objective function. The problem is to select a solution to implement before the available resources are known where the adaption of a non-feasible solution to the resources available involves a system cost. While increasing the amount of computation required, the model enables the decision maker to more effectively trade off increased payoff for decreased likelihood of feasibility.