不完全信息下多阶段移动应用产品与服务合作的可更新契约

考虑不完全信息下由提供移动应用产品与服务的ERP厂商、APP厂商与客户企业组成的产品服务供应链,针对ERP厂商与APP厂商产品服务合作中存在的逆向选择与道德风险问题,构建两阶段的动态博弈模型,分析了APP厂商隐藏与披露能力信息对产品与服务质量、供应链系统绩效与ERP厂商利润的影响,提出了信息披露、收益共享的单阶段契约与存在契约变更的两阶段契约激励策略,比较了两种契约的价值。研究表明：通过在产品开发阶段观察APP厂商的契约菜单选择以及获得的产品质量信息,甄别APP厂商的能力信息,在服务阶段进行契约变更,有利于提高产品与服务质量,降低ERP厂商风险,使供应链系统利润与ERP厂商自身利润实现帕累托改善。最后,通过算例对研究结论进行了直观考察和说明。     

Focusing on Customer Time in Field Service: A Normative Approach

Although customer convenience should be rightfully considered a central element in field services, the customer experience suggests that service enterprises rarely take the customer's preferred time into account in making operational and scheduling decisions. In this paper we present the results of our exploratory research into two interrelated topics: the explicit inclusion of customer time in nonemergency field service delivery decisions and the analysis of trade‐off between the customer's convenience and field service provider's cost. Based on prior research in service quality we identify and illustrate two time‐based performance metrics that are particularly appropriate for assessing service quality in nonemergency field services: performance and conformance quality. To determine vehicle routes, we develop a hybrid heuristic derived from the existing and proven heuristic methods. A numerical example closely patterned after real‐life data is generated and used within a computational experiment to investigate alternate policies for promise time windows. Our experiment shows that over a reasonable range of customer cost parameters the policy of shorter promise time windows reduces the combined total cost incurred by the provider and the customers and should be considered a preferred policy by the field service provider. Managerial implications of this result are discussed.     

The ambivalent effect of complexity on firm performance: A study of the global service provider industry

Prior literature is ambivalent about whether organizational complexity has positive or negative effects on firm performance. Using rich data on global service providers, we explore this ambivalence by disentangling performance consequences of different types of organizational complexity. We show that complexity arising from the coordination of different services and operations negatively influences profit margins through increased coordination costs, whereas complexity coming from the sophistication of particular services may positively influence margins through informational advantages. We also investigate the moderating effects of process commoditization and client-specific investments. Our findings point to critical performance dilemmas facing global service providers in a highly competitive industry, and they help better differentiate performance effects of complexity at different organizational levels.     

基于PDCA的供应链视角下物流客户服务绩效评价研究

在系统总结国内外相关文献的基础上,设计了基于PDCA循环的供应链视角下物流客户服务绩效评价流程,并针对每个流程给出了控制重点,旨在通过对绩效评价流程的规范管理,不断提高物流客户服务绩效和供应链整体绩效水平。在绩效评价方案设计环节提出了给予供应链整体绩效提升的物流客户服务绩效评价方法和指标体系,在绩效评价方案实施环节给出了应用模糊层次分析法选择物流服务商的步骤。     

Corporate governance and management practices: stakeholder involvement, quality and sustainability tools adoption

Local public services are the field in which New Public Management (NPM) and Public Governance issues are most in evidence. The local public services are characterized by the rethinking of the role played by local government in the provision of services. An evolution has taken place. From a traditional configuration in which local public services were managed by local governments they moved to a configuration where a separation has taken place between the local government role (which continues to be the guarantor of the satisfaction of public needs) and the role of local public utilities (LPUs) (responsible for delivering the services). This transformation implies both the delegation of resources and authority to lower organisational levels within the public sector and the reconfiguration of accountability chains between the state institutions and the society. In recent years, an intense debate has developed regarding the introduction of new tools and control systems. Particular attention has been paid to planning and control systems, human resources management systems, and performance management systems, leaving a few pioneers to develop their analysis on corporate governance mechanisms with regard their relationships with both the external (stakeholders) actors and the internal (management) ones. On one hand, the OECD wrote guidelines in order to ensure good corporate governance practices, focusing on relations with stakeholders. On the other hand, the dialogue between corporate governance and stakeholders has been already tackled by a number of International organizations guidelines or principles, following a debate on corporate governance that has progressively combined a stakeholder perspective with a more classic shareholder-maximizing model of governance. This article contributes to the debate on the stakeholder involvement process. By means of both a theoretical discussion and an empirical research conducted on 37 Italian LPUs, this paper attempts to analyse specific management tools which can be used to improve the quality of corporate governance in LPUs, by extending the stakeholder involvement. Some NPM’s tools, such as quality standards and sustainability tools imply an effort to offer new forms of organizational behaviour in the decision-making processes (i.e. the choice of the performance indicators and the reporting tools) and to create a dialogue between the enterprise and its stakeholders. In particular, in our study we focus on the adoption of quality standards (ISO 9000 and Customer Satisfaction) and sustainability tools (sustainability reports and ISO 14000 standard) as NPM’s tools to facilitate the stakeholder involvement practices.     

Pricing and Operational Performance in Discretionary Services

In many services, for example, website or landscape design, the value or quality derived by a customer depends upon the service time, and this valuation differs across customers. Customers procure the service based on the expected value to be delivered, prices charged, and the timeliness of service. We investigate the performance of the optimal pricing scheme as well as two commonly used pricing schemes (fixed fee and time‐based pricing) for such services on important dimensions such as revenue, demand served, and utilization. We propose a novel model that captures the above features and wherein both service rate and demand are endogenous and functions of the pricing scheme. In particular, service time is an outcome of the pricing scheme adopted and the heterogeneous valuations of customers, unlike in the queueing‐based pricing literature. We find that the service system may benefit from a greater variance in consumer valuations, and the performance of pricing schemes is impacted by the shape of the distribution of customers' valuation of service time and the responsiveness desired by customers. Both the fixed fee and time‐based schemes do well relative to the optimal pricing scheme in terms of revenue in many plausible scenarios, but there are substantial differences between the pricing schemes in some important operational metrics. For instance, the fixed fee scheme serves more customers and has higher utilization than the time‐based scheme. We also explore variants of the fixed and time‐based schemes that have better revenue performance and show that the two‐part tariff which is a combination of fixed and time‐based pricing can do as well as the optimal scheme in terms of revenue.     

From blind spots to hotspots: How knowledge services clusters develop and attract foreign investment

This paper explores local and global dynamics underlying the development of knowledge services clusters, which we define as new geographic concentrations of technical talent and service providers offering upstream technical and knowledge-intensive business services to regional and global clients. Taking a co-evolutionary perspective on the development of knowledge services clusters in Latin America, based on data from the Offshoring Research Network (ORN), we find that cluster growth results from intersecting trajectories: the emergence of local talent pools and capabilities initially serving local and regional demand; broadening global search for talent and expertise by multinational corporations; and internationalization strategies of service providers competing to serve global clients. Findings suggest that increasing commoditization of knowledge services opens up windows of opportunity for new clusters, but also involves challenges for sustainable growth. Results may stimulate future research on global sourcing and cluster development.     

Security Assurance: How Online Service Providers Can Influence Security Control Perceptions and Gain Trust

Security researchers agree that security control is a difficult to observe credence quality of online services that Internet users cannot easily assess through research or experience. Yet there is evidence that users form perceptions of security control that strongly determine how much trust they put in online services. This study investigates whether users’ security control perceptions arise solely from their predispositions or whether online service providers can influence them. The study also examines whether these seemingly undependable perceptions of security control lead to trust or whether more traditional factors might offer a better explanation of trust under security risks. To address these issues, this study proposes a new theory of security assurance that integrates the frameworks of trust and quality signals. The results show that rather than being guided by predispositions, users appear to mainly assess security control based on indirect cues controlled by service providers. Importantly, Internet users do not treat the credence quality of security the same way they treat qualities that can be understood through search and experience. Although returning users develop security control perceptions and trust from the usual heuristics of ongoing relationships, they also continue to evaluate market information about service providers like they do in new relationships. The proposed model offers a new perspective of how users respond to the uncertain and technically challenging qualities prevalent in online services.     

Appointment scheduling in tandem-type service systems

Appointment-based service systems arise in a broad variety of healthcare settings (for example an outpatient clinic or a dentist). Where most existing algorithms specifically consider the situation of the patient undergoing a single service, in many practical situations multiple services have to be sequentially performed. Modeling the service system as a tandem queue, the main objective of this paper is to generate schedules that soundly balance the interests of patients (i.e., low waiting times) and staff (i.e., low idle times). Importantly, following up on prior work for the single-node queue, we advocate a phase-type based technique that can deal with any service-time distribution (which may, in addition, vary across patients). Relying on a novel recursive scheme to evaluate the sojourn-time distribution of clients in such tandem systems, we show how optimal schedules can be computed. Our technique is illustrated by extensive numerical experimentation, also leading to practical guidelines that apply to a broad range of parameter settings.     

Foundations and Implications of a Proposed Unified Services Theory

Diverse businesses, such as garbage collection, retail banking, and management consulting are often tied together under the heading of “services”, based on little more than a perception that they are intangible and do not manufacture anything. Such definitions inadequately identify managerial and operational implications common among, and unique to, services. We present a “Unified Services Theory” (UST) to clearly delineate service processes from non‐service processes and to identify key commonalities across seemingly disparate service businesses. The UST defines a service production process as one that relies on customer inputs; customers act as suppliers for all service processes. Non‐services (such as make‐to‐stock manufacturing) rely on customer selection of outputs, payment for outputs, and occasional feedback, but production is not dependent upon inputs from individual customers. The UST reveals principles that are common to the wide range of services and provides a unifying foundation for various theories and models of service operations, such as the traditional “characteristics of services” and Customer Contact Theory. The UST has significant operational corollaries pertaining to capacity and demand management, service quality, services strategy, and so forth. The UST provides a common reference point to which services management researchers can anchor future theory‐building and theory‐testing research.     

制造企业服务业务扩展及其认知因素研究

制造企业的竞争越来越激烈,几乎所有的企业都要面对快速反应多变市场和应对价格压力的要求,面对越来越小的产品利润空间和越来越复杂的客户需求,本文从对工业服务管理文献分析和制造企业的调查研究入手,揭示了制造企业从纯粹的产品生产者向客户支持方案提供者发展的转移趋势.通过对瑞士和德国30多家机器和设备制造企业进行的调查研究,说明了服务业务对制造企业在开发财务、营销和战略机会上的重要作用,并对转移过程中服务业务的扩展过程进行了总结.结合具体企业实践,本文对制约制造企业扩展服务业务中在管理动机上的认知因素进行了分析和研究.结合中国加入WTO后,中国制造企业将全面融入国际竞争的背景,本文期望对中国制造企业的发展和竞争地位的提高提供理论和实践上的指导.     

Using Sustainable Production Indicators to Measure Progress in ISO 14001, EHS System and EPA Achievement Track

This case study presents results from testing a new tool — indicators of sustainable production (ISPs) — at Acushnet Rubber of New Bedford, Massachusetts. The authors demonstrate how the tool can be used to measure continual improvement and how it fits within the current system for reporting compliance to regulations; and performance under ISO 14001 (environmental management system standard), the environmental, health and safety (EHS) system, and EPA Achievement Track.Developed at the Lowell Center for Sustainable Production (LCSP), this tool includes both core (common for all companies) and supplemental (production-specific) indicators, and aims to raise awareness, support decision-making, and promote continuous improvement toward sustainability. Indicators such as energy use, water use, global warming potential, lost work time case rate, turnover rate, community spending and charitable contributions, among others, were tested at both facility and corporate levels. Results showed the company's progress in EHS as well as the areas that need improvement. The paper concludes with a summary of key lessons learned and recommendations for further use of the tool.     

Optimal Configuration of a Service Delivery Network: An Application to a Financial Services Provider

Driven by market pressures, financial service firms are increasingly partnering with independent vendors to create service networks that deliver greater profits while ensuring high service quality. In the management of call center networks, these partnerships are common and form an integral part of the customer care and marketing strategies in the financial services industry. For a financial services firm, configuring such a call center service network entails determining which partners to select and how to distribute service requests among vendors, while incorporating their capabilities, costs, and revenue‐generating abilities. Motivated by a problem facing a Fortune 500 financial services provider, we develop and apply a novel mixed integer programming model for the service network configuration problem. Our tactical decision support model effectively accounts for the firm's costs by capturing the impact of service requirements on vendor staffing levels and seat requirements, and permits imposing call routing preferences and auxiliary service costs. We implemented the model and applied it to data from an industry partner. Results suggest that our approach can generate considerable cost savings and substantial additional revenues, while ensuring high service quality. Results based on test instances demonstrate similar savings and outperform two rule‐based methods for vendor assignment.     

网购快递物流服务系统测评的枝模型仿真

以网购环境为背景,运用物流服务理论与系统动力学理论,通过对快递物流服务的流程分析,构建网购快递物流服务系统测评体系,对此体系和物流服务质量这一主变量分别进行了因果关系分析,进而构建了物流服务质量下的配送及时率这一附属变量的系统动力学枝模型,并对模型进行了量纲化检验、敏感性检验以及极端条件测试以证明模型的正确性;在此基础上,将申通、圆通、中通以及韵达四家快递企业的数据运用到Vensim软件对枝模型进行实证仿真并得出以此变量为根据的快递企业排名,为网购快递物流服务的测评提供一种新的方法。     

An empirical study of transformational leadership,team performance and service quality in retail banks

The discipline of operations management (OM) has long been offering differing quantitative techniques for improving the efficiency of banking operations. However, there has been a trend in recent years that operations and services of the banking industry are becoming more diverse and unstructured, rendering many traditional OM quantitative techniques less effective in performance improvement. By integrating the literature on banking operations, service quality, leadership style and work teams, we argue that leadership style and team performance are crucial concerns determining the service quality performance of today's banking operations in a team setting. Using data collected from 192 employees from 32 operational teams (a leader and five members in each team) in 15 retail banks in Macau, China, we investigated whether the five dimensions of transformational leadership have an impact on team performance with respect to team cohesion, team leader job satisfaction and team competence; and whether the dimensions of team performance have an impact on such service quality dimensions as reliability and responsiveness. We found that one of the dimensions of transformational leadership and two of the dimensions of team performance have a significant impact on service quality. We discuss the implications of the findings for research and practise.     

Messung der Qualität in Dienstleistungscentern – am Beispiel eines Flughafens

The study shows that customers’ perception of overall quality in services centers is driven by two components: the service encounter quality and the quality of the servicecape. Thus, customers’ overall evaluation of service quality in a services center is a function of n service encounter qualities (k?=?1…n) and the quality of the servicecape. Furthermore, it is of great importance for the quality management of a services center that there could be (1) direct effects between the quality dimensions and the overall service quality as well as (2) direct effects between the quality dimensions themselves. The above mentioned study had been carried out exemplarily at the EuroAirport Basel-Mulhouse-Freiburg. The survey results suggest that servicecape quality has a significant effect both on the overall service quality and on the service encounter qualities. Moreover, the study shows that key quality indicators of the service center apply to the perception of security as well as to the service environment (for instance, arrangement of check-in/security desk, comfort of seats, ambience of waiting area).     

水环境安全评价方法及其在京津冀地区的应用

为了克服模糊综合评价方法中的权重选取以及最大最小算法导致的信息缺失问题，本文提出一种改进的模糊综合评价方法。首先以熵权法、灰色关联分析法以及主成分分析法为基础，建立组合权重模型；其次，在加权平均原则下引入综合评分方法进行评价得到最终评价结果。从经济社会、水质状况和资源条件三个方面出发，初步建立了包含17个指标的水环境安全评价体系。利用主成分分析法对初步建立的指标体系进行了筛选，最终确定了13个指标作为评价指标。在筛选之后的指标体系下，用改进的模糊综合评价法对北京、天津、河北以及京津冀地区总体的水环境安全进行了评价，给出了2006-2014年间各地区水环境安全变化情况，结果显示京津冀地区水环境安全基本呈现北京优于河北优于天津的趋势；京津冀地区总体的水环境安全呈现先变好再变差的趋势。森林覆盖率是水环境安全最主要的影响因素，其次是第三产业占GDP的比重、人均水资源量以及Ⅰ-Ⅲ类水质占比。弹性系数分析表明，这四个指标的改善也是对京津冀地区水环境安全提高最有效的措施。最后，根据对评价结果的分析，提出了提高京津冀水环境安全的一些建议。     

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.     

Expert Study to Select Indicators of the Occurrence of Emerging Mycotoxin Hazards

This article describes a Delphi‐based expert judgment study aimed at the selection of indicators to identify the occurrence of emerging mycotoxin hazards related to Fusarium spp. in wheat supply chains. A panel of 29 experts from 12 European countries followed a holistic approach to evaluate the most important indicators for different chain stages (growth, transport and storage, and processing) and their relative importance. After three e‐mailing rounds, the experts reached consensus on the most important indicators for each of the three stages: wheat growth, transport and storage, and processing. For wheat growth, these indicators include: relative humidity/rainfall, crop rotation, temperature, tillage practice, water activity of the kernels, and crop variety/cultivar. For the transport and storage stage, they include water activity in the kernels, relative humidity, ventilation, temperature, storage capacity, and logistics. For wheat processing, indicators include quality data, fraction of the cereal used, water activity in the kernels, quality management and traceability systems, and carryover of contamination. The indicators selected in this study can be used in an identification system for the occurrence of emerging mycotoxin hazards in wheat supply chains. Such a system can be used by risk managers within governmental (related) organizations and/or the food and feed industry in order to react proactively to the occurrence of these emerging mycotoxins.     

The strategic analysis of logistics service sharing in an e-commerce platform

In e-commerce, the success of hybrid online platforms is well documented where the platform not only works as a retailer but also offers online marketplace services to sellers. Logistics service is one of the most expensive operations for e-commerce and plays a critical role in promoting online purchases. In most cases, the platform builds a self-supporting logistics service system to deliver its own products, and the seller outsources the logistics service to third-party logistics service providers (TPLPs). Recently, the e-commerce market has emerged with a new trend of business-to-business logistics service sharing—the platform shares its logistics service system with the seller. In this paper, we first analyze the strategic and economic impacts of logistics service sharing. Our analysis shows that whereas logistics service sharing will lead to a lose-win situation for the platform and the seller when the TPLP's logistics service level and the market potential are low, it will lead to a win-lose situation when the TPLP's logistics service level or the market potential is very high. Furthermore, a win-win situation can be achieved when the TPLP's logistics service level and the market potential are in the middle regions. Then, we examine the equilibrium mode by considering the strategic interactions between the platform and the seller. We find that when the TPLP's logistics service level and the market potential are relatively low, the equilibrium mode is No-Service-Sharing. As the TPLP's logistics service level, the market potential, or both increase, the equilibrium mode will evolve from No-Service-Sharing to Service-Sharing.