A comparative study of capital expenditure evaluation techniques

An empirical study of the techniques of economic evaluation of capital investment projects was made during 1973–1974 in India by the author. Influence of both the quantitative and qualitative factors on the determination of economic evaluation techniques was studied. Comparison has been made wherever possible with the practice in the United States of America.     

A comparison of several adaptive forecasting procedures

There is a considerable amount of published research relevant to the selection of automatic, online, single exponential smoothing models, applicable primarily to following a stationary process of data. Research into adaptive, double exponential smoothing models which are applicable to following a linear trend in the data has not been so profuse, however, particularly under strict online design specifications. Five feasible methods from the double exponential family were selected for comparison in this study, which consisted of four separate simulation experiments. The online design specifications are interpreted quite strictly to include adaptiveness, recursiveness, fading memory, computational economy, robustness, self-initialisation and comprehensibility to management.     

A comparison of applications of microcomputers in production

Earlier research has established that the full potential of microcomputers is not being achieved by production management in small companies. Moreover, questionnaire results and in-company interviews were used to support suggested reasons for this situation. This paper reports further work carried out to examine the issues raised in far more detail. Collaboration took place with nine separate companies over a range of applications. Three of these case studies are presented in detail, and general conclusions drawn relating both to these specific studies and to the total collaboration.     

A review of capacity planning techniques within standard software packages

This paper gives a review of capacity planning techniques from which today's standard software packages for production control make their choice. The following techniques are discussed in the paper: four variants of the rough cut capacity check, capacity requirements planning with infinite and finite loading, input/output planning without and with individual work orders, and a number of sequencing techniques. An important issue throughout the paper is the concept of robustness and nervousness of planning techniques, Aspects of interaction between techniques and human planners arc given. The human planner is still an important factor in capacity planning.     

Ethical decision making: A cross-cultural comparison

The purpose of this study is to compare the ethical decision making of respondents from two different cultures. Perceived organizational support for ethical decision making was also compared. The samples include residents of South Florida, United States of America and Jamaica, West Indies. Respondents were employed full time. Results indicate that for the majority of business dilemmas presented, no significant differences were found. Implications for these findings are discussed.     

Vietnam: A cross-cultural comparison of upward influence ethics

We explore the ethical facets of within-company upward influence behavior. Our focus is Vietnam, where only minimal research has been conducted, with comparison data from China, France, and the US—countries that have had both past and present relationships with Vietnam. Our hypotheses are developed within the contexts of the historical, business ideology, and socio-cultural relationships that Vietnam has shared with these countries. The findings indicate that Vietnam is a country that is largely unique unto itself regarding the perspective on upward influence ethics that is held by its professional workforce.     

Political behavior in organizations—A cross-cultural comparison

The purpose of this study is to explore the differences in the meaning attached to organizational politics (OP) across cultures. A critical incidents scale was distributed to two samples of university faculty, one in Canada and one in Israel. Three aspects relevant to the perception of OP were investigated : (1) the role that elements previously identified in the literature play in the actual perception of OP by employees; (2) the extent to which OP is perceived as moral; and (3) the degree to which OP is perceived to be prevalent or likely to occur in the subjects’ organization. The results showed that the Canadian sample perceived the various elements in the scale as generally more political, less moral, and less prevalent in their organization than the Israeli sample. Both samples considered informal influence attempts as more political than formal or illegal ones. The two samples also considered illegal influence attempts as less moral than formal or informal ones. Elements defined in our study as circumstantial, i.e, “conflict,” “power attainment,” “concealment of motive,” and “acting against the organization,” were found to make a smaller contribution to the perception of situations as political than elements defined as behavioral, i.e., “formal,” “informal,” and “illegal,” influence attempts.     

A comparison of spreadsheet users with different levels of experience

How do experienced spreadsheet users compare to inexperienced ones, and what light can this comparison shed on spreadsheet best practices? This is the question we address in this paper, using the results from a survey of nearly 1600 respondents. This survey was completed by a wide range of spreadsheet users and focused on their significant characteristics and practices. We were interested in their training, experience, collaboration, and quality control methods. We also examined the number of spreadsheet functions they used regularly, the manner in which they created spreadsheets, and the types of tests they used to check results. We compared two subgroups corresponding to two extremes with respect to their self-reported level of experience and skill. Each subgroup was represented by roughly 10% of the total respondents. Our results suggest that there is a substantial difference between these groups, not only in their personal backgrounds and the corporate setting within which they work, but also in their individual spreadsheet skills and practices. We find that the most experienced subgroup exhibits many desirable characteristics and practices.     

Single machine scheduling: A comparison of two solution procedures

Recent research on the single machine scheduling problem has focused on the treatment of multiple scheduling objectives. Most works have used some combination of mean flowtime, maximum tardiness, or total tardiness as scheduling criteria. Previous research has largely ignored earliness as a scheduling criterion. This paper presents a model that employs the criteria of flowtime as a measure of work-in-process (WIP) inventory and total job earliness to represent finished goods inventory. Total tardiness is used to represent customer satisfaction. The three criteria are used to form a single, weighted-sum objective function for guiding the choice of the best processing sequence. Two procedures are presented that might be used to solve this problem. The first is an enumeration scheme using bounding and dominance criteria that have been developed to aid efficient solution, and the second is a mixed integer linear programming (LP) formulation. Computational experience with the two models is also presented.     

A cross-cultural comparison of death anxiety: a brief note

Data are reported from samples of undergraduates around the world who have been administered Templer's Death Anxiety Scale. Data from 24 American samples and from 16 nations were identified. Strong sex differences were found and an association between the scores of men and women.     

A stochastic model of industrial fluctuations: An international comparison

This paper presents a stochastic model of production fluctuations. It compares the distributions of observed duration times for expansionary and contractionary phases with those which would be expected if production fluctuations were generated by a random process. From an analysis of the post World War II production time series of seven developed countries, it was concluded that the only ‘cycles’ in industrial activity are ‘Monte Carlo cycles’.     

A critique of some techniques of manpower forecasting at national and sectoral level

This paper examines some of the principal methods which are currently being used by manpower planners in the U.K. and elsewhere to make projections of the demand for national and sectoral manpower in the medium term.Most of the paper deals with methods related to the Cobb-Douglas production function, and it is suggested that the “MRP” method developed by the OECD is, despite its apparent naïveté, the technique that offers the most promising basis for future development, in view of its theoritical soundness, its flexibility and its lack of restrictive assumptions.     

A comparison of Plato's Republic and Deming's System of Profound Knowledge

This article compares the emerging quality concepts in Plato's Republic with W. Edwards Deming's System of Profound Knowledge and fourteen points for management. Some interesting similarities are found between the works of the two philosophers.     

A comparison of several approximations to the lead time demand distribution

Several distributions have been used for approximating the lead time demand distribution in inventory systems. We compare five distributions, the normal, the logistic, the lognormal, the gamma and the Weibull for obtaining the expected number of back orders, the reorder levels to have a given protection and the optimal order quantity, reorder levels in continuous review models of (Q, r) type. The normal and the logistic distributions are inadequate to represent the situations where the coefficient of variation (the ratio of the standard deviation to the mean) of the lead time demand distribution is large. The lognormal, the gamma and the Weibull distributions are versatile and adequate; however the lognormal seems to be a viable candidate because of its computational simplicity.     

Children and well-being: A comparison of employed and non-employed women

While employment improves health, having children at home does not. Indeed, the most likely work-family conflict for women is having children at home. In this study the effect of children on well-being was predicted to differ for employed and non-employed women. In addition, only amongst the employed women was locus of control hypothcsized to moderate this relationship. In a sample of women with partners (n = 116), using multiple-regression analysis, the results indicated that the number of children living at home, rather than the presence of young children, was associated with increased happiness in women. Employment was not predictive of women's well-being. However, it moderated the effect of number of children on their levels of happiness. In addition, non-employed women showed a U-shaped relationship between number of children and psychological distress. Finally, contrary to prediction, locus of control did not moderate the relationship between number of children and women's well-being. The findings are discussed in terms of the role expansion hypothesis.     

The nature of faculty work: A Canadian and US comparison

Abstract

Results based on 187 responses to an electronic survey from Canadian and US faculty in human resource development and adult education identified career paths of faculty, the nature of the job (i.e. how faculty divide their time between teaching, research and service), the nature of their programmes, and the key changes, issues and trends in their respective fields. There were few differences between the two countries. Where possible, findings also are compared to two previous studies. Identifying what drew faculty to academia and how they spend their time may enhance understanding of how they derive meaning and satisfaction from work. This understanding could help identify ways to mitigate faculty turnover.     

A comparison of fixed and dynamic pricing policies in revenue management

We consider the problem of selling a fixed capacity or inventory of items over a finite selling period. Earlier research has shown that using a properly set fixed price during the selling period is asymptotically optimal as the demand potential and capacity grow large and that dynamic pricing has only a secondary effect on revenues. However, additional revenue improvements through dynamic pricing can be important in practice and need to be further explored. We suggest two simple dynamic heuristics that continuously update prices based on remaining inventory and time in the selling period. The first heuristic is based on approximating the optimal expected revenue function and the second heuristic is based on the solution of the deterministic version of the problem. We show through a numerical study that the revenue impact of using these dynamic pricing heuristics rather than fixed pricing may be substantial. In particular, the first heuristic has a consistent and remarkable performance leading to at most 0.2% gap compared to optimal dynamic pricing. We also show that the benefits of these dynamic pricing heuristics persist under a periodic setting. This is especially true for the first heuristic for which the performance is monotone in the frequency of price changes. We conclude that dynamic pricing should be considered as a more favorable option in practice.