Conflict of values— the central strategy problem

There is growing evidence that the central strategy question for business is no longer ‘what business are you in?’ but‘why are you in business?’ The traditional answers to this question—‘to make profits’, ‘to grow’ and ‘to give an adequate return to the shareholder’, are all being questioned. In their place others are being suggested—‘to provide satisfying jobs’, ‘to help solve social problems’, ‘to assist in urban and regional development’.In this article, Bernard Taylor suggests that the conflict between business goals and social goals has become the central strategy problem. Business enterprises like other organizations tend to develop their own distinctive sub-cultures with their own value systems which may differ markedly from the values accepted in society generally. The more effective the selection, training and reward systems, the more these business values will be reinforced.But this can lead to difficulties when society begins to reject business values in favour of other social goals; particularly at a time when the power and autonomy of management is being challenged and Corporate Planning is being transformed from an internal dialogue between managers at headquarters and managers in divisions into an open debate involving public servants, employees and self-appointed representatives of community interests.     

关系营销中客户回报计划对客户品牌选择行为的影响研究

本研究在考虑客户间异质偏好性的基础上,利用一组客户的纵贯交易数据建立消费者离散选择模型研究了回报计划对客户个体层面品牌选择行为的影响,并利用策略实验及潜分层模型对相关问题进行了系统深入的分析。结果表明,回报计划可以有效提升客户的品牌选择购买概率,是一种有效的关系营销策略;策略实验分析得到,竞争的环境下,对零售超市而言其最优决策策略不仅是实施回报计划,而且要努力争取客户成为自己回报计划的会员;此外,通过潜分层模型评估发现客户回报计划仅会对一类特定客户具有明显的刺激作用。最后讨论了结论对企业营销管理实践的意义。     

Applying Process Knowledge for Yield Variation Reduction: A Longitudinal Field Study*

The widespread recognition of the detrimental effects of high yield variation in advanced manufacturing technology settings, both in terms of cost and management of production processes, underscores the need to develop effective strategies for reducing yield variation. In this article, we report the findings of a longitudinal field study in an electromechanical motor assembly plant where we examined how the application of process knowledge by production work teams can reduce yield variation. We propose and provide an operationalizion of a strategy to identify the sequence of particular types of actions—actions to control the mean followed by actions to control the variance—that work teams should pursue over time to apply process knowledge for reducing yield variation. The results of our empirical analysis show that yield variation was significantly reduced on three of the four production lines at the manufacturing plant that served as our research site. Differences in strategies for applying process knowledge help explain the different results on each of the production lines.     

基于巴斯模型的消费者推荐奖励和广告投入动态定价决策

本文从新产品扩散的过程出发，构建了同时考虑口碑效应和广告效应的产品扩散模型，研究企业推荐奖励和广告投入的动态定价问题。利用汉密尔顿函数和最大值原理得到最优解，并结合多个关键参数对最优解进行了敏感性分析。研究发现：最优推荐奖励呈先减少后增加趋势，最优广告投入则是逐渐减少；对于高价值产品，企业应采取高价格高奖励的策略；企业的推荐奖励策略和广告投入策略会受到推荐奖励效率、广告效率、自发购买比率和传统口碑效的影响。本文的研究结论对企业的推荐奖励和广告策略设计有一定的理论指导意义。     

考虑作业空间干涉的工程项目时间-成本均衡优化研究

工程现场的空间资源是制约工程活动开展的重要影响因素。本文研究考虑空间干涉的工程调度优化问题,定义作业空间干涉的度量方式和作业效率函数,建立工程调度的工期-成本双目标优化模型。针对问题特征设计相对延迟编码方式和解码机制,采用NSGA-II算法求解模型。以某工程案例为研究对象,通过与传统方法对比实验验证了模型和算法的有效性,接着分析了算法的最大延迟时间参数对算法性能的影响。实验结果表明,本文提出的模型和算法能有效提升工程进度和成本目标。     

政府奖惩机制下药品安全质量监管三方演化博弈及仿真分析

药品安全关乎人民群众生命健康、经济发展、社会稳定和国家安全，一直以来都是政府和全社会关注的热点问题之一。但是，近年来频发的各类药品安全事件，揭露了政府监管缺失、药品检测机制不完善、公众投诉失效等诸多问题。本文考虑了药品检测中存在寻租现象，构建了药品生产企业、第三方药品检测机构和政府监管部门之间的三方演化博弈模型，分析了各参与方策略选择的演化稳定性，探讨了各要素对三方策略选择的影响关系，进一步分析了三方博弈系统中均衡点的稳定性。研究结果表明：1)政府增强奖励、惩罚力度均有助于促进企业生产高药效药品、第三方药品检测机构拒绝寻租的规范行为，但是增大奖励力度将不利于政府自身履行监管职责；2)政府设定合理的奖惩机制必须符合对各方的奖惩之和大于其投机收益的条件，才能保障演化稳定市场环境下的药品安全；3)上级政府对监管部门失职的问责对增强企业生产高药效药品的稳健性具有重要意义；4)提升企业的药品销售收益、增加企业寻租成本也是避免企业生产低药效药品的有效途径。最后，利用Matlab 2020b进行了仿真分析，为政府完善药品监管机制提出了对策与建议。     

Linking Product Planning and Process Design Decisions

Manufacturing strategy reflects the goals of the business strategy and directs the manufacturing function in achieving them. In this study, we focus on two decision areas with crucial implications for manufacturing strategy: product planning and process design. Using mathematical programming models as a research tool, we test several conjectures in the manufacturing strategy literature regarding linkages between the two decisions. Our results show that a close integration between these decisions helps control the product offerings, stabilize process requirements, improve process technology choices, and increase net cash flows over time. Using the concept of environmental clusters, we found that a close linkage is more critical when the environment is more complex, less uncertain, and tighter. Based on these findings, we present some managerial implications and suggestions for future research.     

Mitigating the U.S. Drug Shortages Through Pareto‐Improving Contracts

Drug shortages have been a major challenge facing the US pharmaceutical industry and government in recent years. Although the problem has drawn tremendous attention from the government and media, limited academic research has been devoted to this problem, and few solutions have been proposed based on rigorous research. This study addresses the drug shortage problem from a supply chain perspective, a key aspect missing in the literature, and proposes to mitigate shortages through drug purchase contracts. By modeling the drug supply chain, we capture the objectives of various supply chain parties, and investigate Pareto‐improving contracts that mitigate drug shortages, improve drug manufacturer's and group purchasing organization (GPO)'s profits, and cut government spending and healthcare providers’ costs. We explore structural properties of key supply chain decisions and the Pareto‐improving contracts, and conduct scenario analysis with realistic industry data to evaluate shortage mitigation solutions. Our analysis shows that increasing drug prices only, a solution advocated by many, is not very effective in shortage mitigation. Price increases must be paired with strengthened failure‐to‐supply clauses (called the IPS approach) to achieve consistent and significant shortage reduction as well as Pareto improvement. Across all scenarios tested, a 30% price increase under IPS can lead to a minimum, average, and maximum shortage reduction of 25%, 53%, and 70%, respectively. Our analysis also shows the impacts of IPS on different parties in the supply chain and the impacts of various model parameters on shortage mitigation. The IPS approach rewards reliability of drug supply, which is in line with the FDA's strategic plan to reward quality, but is easier to achieve in this regulation‐based industry. Interactions with the government and industry practitioners indicate that IPS also challenges the current mindset in pharmaceutical contracting.     

社交媒体中企业分享奖励营销模式研究

社交媒体中用户之间的分享行为具有潜在的经济价值,因此越来越多的企业通过分享奖励模式开展社会化营销,以挖掘新用户。本文构建“嵌套”Stackelberg博弈模型,研究了企业的最优分享奖励机制设计,并对比分析了分享奖励营销模式与传统大众广告营销模式。主要研究发现,企业的最优奖励策略包括单独奖励新用户、单独奖励分享者以及同时奖励分享者和新用户三种。不同策略的选择受到价格以及用户之间社交关系的影响。当用户之间的社交关系较弱时,由打折奖励引起用户购买概率增加的“折扣作用”强于由分享奖励金引起的“推荐作用”,企业适合采用单独奖励新用户策略;当用户之间的社交关系较强时,“推荐作用”强于“折扣作用”,企业适合采用单独奖励分享者策略。同时,企业选择大众广告营销模式或者分享奖励模式受到市场渗透率和用户之间社交关系两个主要因素的影响。     

The Interplay of Goals and Promises of Pay-for-Performance on Individual and Group Performance: An Operant Interpretation

ABSTRACT

Building upon the work of Fellner and Sulzer-Azaroff (1984), an operant model of goal setting is presented from which the effects of goals as well as monetary reinforcers can be examined and compared. The model is premised upon the assumption that the effectiveness of individual and group goals and financial reinforcers can be predicted following a detailed examination of an individual's reinforcement history, level of deprivation and satisfaction and the prevailing behavioral contingencies. The effectiveness of the two discriminative stimuli—goals and promises of pay-for-peformance—are discussed in relationship to operant principles.     

A STATISTICAL ANALYSIS OF THE UTILIZATION EFFECTIVENESS OF A PERT PROGRAM

This article is based on the belief that students should learn the computational aspects of decision science techniques outside the classroom, thus freeing the instructor from this task and enabling him to devote more class time to focusing on the theoretical and/or application-oriented elements which will take students further in their learning experience. An experiment was designed to determine the learning value of one way of achieving this, namely the use of a Learning Center where students learned individually using a programmed instruction learning machine. The research involved both graduates and undergraduates learning the fundamentals of PERT—some with the learning machine approach while others were involved in more conventional pedagogies. Surprising success was discovered relative to both the approach and the quality of the PERT program used, with far-reaching implications regarding futuristic approaches to decision science education.     

Some aspects of price strategy

A firm's success, within a rapidly growing and dynamic market, depends upon its ability to respond to market demand and to react to competitive forces. A key factor determining success is the pricing policy employed by the firm. Product pricing, however, is not simple; supply and demand, as well as the interaction and reaction of competitors, must be taken into consideration. By simulating a competitive market environment, however, a firm should be able to evaluate different pricing strategies prior to employing a strategy in practice. The goal of this research was to propose a simulation model to serve this purpose. Particularly, the objective was to demonstrate that if an industry can be characterized as one in which cost as well as price decline with cumulative volume, a pricing policy leading to market dominance exists. A simulation model is desirable for evaluating the proper pricing strategy for achieving such a market position.     

Implementing strategic plans through strategic program evaluation

Strategic Program Evaluation (SPE) is proposed as a method for linking the choice elements of corporate strategy—missions, objectives, strategies, goals, programs etc.—to ensure that strategic plans are implemented. Such a use of SPE requires the exposition of the specific relationships among the strategic choice elements and the development of evaluation criteria that can be used to develop a program structure that effectively implements higher level strategic decisions.     

基于路径依赖视角的我国MAH制度实施演化博弈分析

MAH制度是国际公认通行的药品上市审批制度,具有生产形式多样化、技术转让自由、节约市场资源以及提升政府行政监管质量等优点。2016年,我国在北京、上海等10个省（市）开展药品上市许可持有人制度（MAH）试点工作。本文根据我国药品上市制度变迁的路径依赖问题,构建演化博弈模型,分别对由药品研发机构、药品生产企业构成的内部制度变迁和由政府、消费者构成的外部制度变迁进行分析,深入研究博弈主体行为的演化路径。研究表明：内部制度和外部制度路径依赖是制约我国医药产业发展和新药研发动力不足的主要原因,药品上市内部制度变迁主要通过规模效应和适应性预期影响药品研发机构和药品生产企业,从而产生药品上市内部制度路径依赖;药品上市外部制度变迁主要通过学习效应和协调效应影响政府和消费者,从而产生药品上市外部制度路径依赖。在此基础上,运用Matlab数值分析对药品制度变迁过程中的最优稳定策略进行探讨,解释了我国MAH制度变迁过程中存在的路径依赖问题,为完善我国MAH制度、破除路径依赖提供了一定参考。     

“互联网+医疗健康”背景下考虑患者反馈机制的药品质量监管策略研究

药品质量关乎公众生命健康、国民经济发展、社会稳定和国家安全，一直以来都是政府和全社会关注的热点问题之一。"互联网+医疗健康"背景下药品流通速度加快使得药品安全问题影响范围扩大，因此，建立患者反馈机制是促进互联网药品质量监管的有效方式。考虑患者反馈机制下如何设计互联网药品质量监管策略的问题，基于演化博弈理论，构建了政府部门、药品生产商、医药电商和患者参与的药品质量监管四方演化博弈模型，通过分析各博弈主体策略选择的稳定性，并基于Lyapunov第一法则对复制动态系统十六种均衡点进行稳定性分析，研究了促进药品生产商提供高质量药品的政府监管策略和患者反馈机制，并利用Matlab 2017仿真分析了各关键要素对策略演化的影响。研究结果表明：1）患者倾向于失真评价或投诉率较低时，医药电商更倾向于选择药品质量不检测，不利于互联网药品质量安全；2）患者失真评价下，不存在药品生产商提供高质量药品的稳定策略组合，而真实评价下有效的反馈机制和监管机制可使互联网药品质量安全具有稳定性；3）提高患者评价（正面评价或负面评价）带给医药电商和药品生产商的声誉价值增加或声誉损失，将会使药品生产商选择提供高质量药品做为稳定策略；4）降低患者失真评价和投诉维权行为的增加，均可增强药品生产商提供高质量药品的稳健性。最后，结合演化博弈模型和仿真分析结果，为完善药品质量监管机制提出了对策与建议。     

Environmental scanning—Does it help the chief executive?

Firms must correctly identify and analyze the nature of their strategic environments, their strategic oppurtunities and problems, and, formulate the precise strategy sets for corporate strategy for accomplishing the chosen organizational objectives and goals. This articles reports on a survey. Chief executives of industrial corporations provided their insights and experience (see Appendix I) and the findings are analyzed for the implications for other practising chief executives. The nature of environment which is strategic to a particular firm has considerable influence upon the firm's choice of strategies. The correct understanding of this influence is critical to the firm's organizational effectiveness. Only after a correct understanding can the chief executive formulate the precise mix of strategies and meld them in the strategy sets of the corporate strategy.The major findings indicate that the levels of difficulty experienced in accomplishing firm's objectives and goals depend upon the perceived nature of complexity, unpredictability and dynamism of the firm's strategic environments. The levels of clarity on strategic issues also depend upon these same attributes of environments. The formulation of strategy sets of corporate strategy are indicative of the ways by which the chief executive and his management team expect the firm to achieve its major objectives and goals by monitoring the strategy sets to keep in tune with the changing realities of the firm's strategic environments. General management, marketing and finance, were the vital group strategies, followed by production and research and development. External relations, personnel and procurement were the least important strategies. Firms operating in simple and stable environments experienced the least difficulty in achieving corporate goals, while firms in dynamic and complex environments experienced the greatest difficulty.     

Eco-efficiency and Integrated Product Policy: Lessons from Finland

Eco-efficiency refers to the use of our natural resources — economically, socially and ecologically — in the most efficient manner possible, while containing environmental damage. The main aim is to improve the ratio service produced by the product to harmful environmental impacts. Together with Integrated Product Policy (IPP) it shifts environmental protection from the reduction of production phase emissions and waste towards environmental impacts of products’ whole life cycle, effective use of natural resources and market orientation. IPP is more clearly an environmental policy strategy and program, where the role of the government and of various policy instruments is inevitably underlined. Finnish Environmental policy exemplifies how these new concepts have already been taken into account in strategies of sustainable development and why it is important not to apply them separately, but to find the means by which eco-efficiency thinking and the factor goals it includes can be considered when IPP is being developed.     

A Theoretical Model of Manufacturing Lead Times and Their Relationship to a Manufacturing Goal Hierarchy*

In recent years, manufacturing firms have realized that a new, higher level of global competition causes them to compete simultaneously on multiple manufacturing goals, such as quality, delivery, cost, and flexibility. In response to this realization, considerable research now focuses on the relationship of manufacturing improvement programs to manufacturing goals. However, to date, this research has not investigated the specific underlying statistical relationships between manufacturing goals and the shop floor. This study investigates manufacturing lead time linkages with manufacturing programs and manufacturing goals. The basic purpose of this study is to understand and explain how programs affect the elements of manufacturing lead time and how manufacturing lead time affects manufacturing goal capabilities. By understanding these linkages, managers can logically trace the effects of specific programs to their eventual effects on manufacturing goal capabilities. This study's most important finding is that statistical variations in the elements of lead time cause a tendency for certain manufacturing goals to be more difficult to control and achieve than others because of canonical relationships of lead time variances. To control these lead time variances, successful firms concentrate their early program targets first on achieving “fitness for use” quality, followed by delivery reliability, short delivery lead time and cost, current product flexibility, and lastly, new product flexibility. This study mathematically illustrates which improvement programs most affect manufacturing goals through their relationship to manufacturing lead time variance reduction. It suggests that firms improve goal performance by initially targeting improvement through setup time reduction programs, defect reduction programs, and preventive maintenance programs, to facilitate quality improvements. By targeting specific programs and their related lead time variances, firms improve their manufacturing facility competitiveness with minimum obstacles.     

Insight into “Calculated Risk”: An Application to the Prioritization of Emerging Infectious Diseases for Blood Transfusion Safety

Increasing identification of transmissions of emerging infectious diseases (EIDs) by blood transfusion raised the question which of these EIDs poses the highest risk to blood safety. For a number of the EIDs that are perceived to be a threat to blood safety, evidence on actual disease or transmission characteristics is lacking, which might render measures against such EIDs disputable. On the other hand, the fact that we call them “emerging” implies almost by definition that we are uncertain about at least some of their characteristics. So what is the relative importance of various disease and transmission characteristics, and how are these influenced by the degree of uncertainty associated with their actual values? We identified the likelihood of transmission by blood transfusion, the presence of an asymptomatic phase of infection, prevalence of infection, and the disease impact as the main characteristics of the perceived risk of disease transmission by blood transfusion. A group of experts in the field of infectious diseases and blood transfusion ranked sets of (hypothetical) diseases with varying degrees of uncertainty associated with their disease characteristics, and used probabilistic inversion to obtain probability distributions for the weight of each of these risk characteristics. These distribution weights can be used to rank both existing and newly emerging infectious diseases with (partially) known characteristics. Analyses show that in case there is a lack of data concerning disease characteristics, it is the uncertainty concerning the asymptomatic phase and the disease impact that are the most important drivers of the perceived risk. On the other hand, if disease characteristics are well established, it is the prevalence of infection and the transmissibility of the disease by blood transfusion that will drive the perceived risk. The risk prioritization model derived provides an easy to obtain and rational expert assessment of the relative importance of an (emerging) infectious disease, requiring only a limited amount of information. Such a model might be used to justify a rational and proportional response to an emerging infectious disease, especially in situations where little or no specific information is available.     

The economic evaluation of time: Organizational causes and individual consequences

People acquire ways of thinking about time partly in and from work organizations, where the control and measurement of time use is a prominent feature of modern management—an inevitable consequence of employees selling their time for money. In this paper, we theorize about the role organizational practices play in promoting an economic evaluation of time and time use—where time is thought of primarily in monetary terms and viewed as a scarce resource that should be used as efficiently as possible. While people usually make decisions about time and money differently, we argue that management practices that make the connection between time and money salient can heighten the economic evaluation of time. We consider both the organizational causes of economic evaluation as well as its personal and societal consequences.