Setting corporate objectives

This paper states that ‘the resources are raw materials, people and capital. The private sector company can survive as such only by using all three resources efficiently’.These statements summarize the need not only for the setting of Corporate Objectives but the cogent and incontrovertible argument for such objectives being financial.Let no one doubt the painful process that is involved in determining the right objectives for the corporate entity or, indeed, for any entity which seeks to survive and continue.This is why the process of setting, accepting and working towards objectives has to start from the top but must continue throughout the whole organization. Who am I and where am I going?—is a question that is as valid for the Company as it is for the individual.The corporate objective of the Fisons Group is consistently to achieve profitable growth in real terms by increasing earnings per share and raising the return on capital employed.I hope you find this paper as constructive to you as it has been to me and my colleagues.     

Setting corporate objectives using market required earnings

This paper examines and illustrates a new approach to corporate planning. The authors provide a framework which can overcome some of the more pernicious effects of long term corporate planning such as the gearing of the more fundamental commercial goals. The authors produce a rigorous framework as to the criteria upon which a corporate strategy should be based and then tested their model against the corporate planning activities of several large companies whose profitability rates were relatively high. Finally, the paper analyses the optimal method of utilizing the proposed model.     

Setting corporate objectives as a basis for action

This paper states that the purpose of corporate objectives is to initiate management action. If they do not change what management does they are worthless.There is a hierarchy of corporate needs analogous to Maslow's human needs. The corporate entity should define its objectives for each level of the hierarchy.Objectives for the lower levels should be to satisfy needs. To do more than this is wasteful.Objectives for the top, purposive level should define in practical terms a leadership position that is to be achieved by positive concentration of management effort and all other available resources.Objectives should be action orientated, unambiguous, readily understood and widely communicated.     

Economic value added: A primer for European managers

In this article the growing popularity of economic value added (EVA) is addressed. It discusses why managers are turning to EVA as a performance metric, how EVA is used by companies, and the problems that typically arise in implementing it. The accounts of Rhône-Poulenc are used to demonstrate the calculation and interpretation of EVA numbers.     

Should you have a payment system based on added value?

Payment schemes based on added value ratios are not prevalent in the U.K. There is suspicion of them on both sides of industry. Management fears that disclosure of information may be used against them and employees regard them as schemes over which they have no control and which are the tool of management. The author advocates that there is room for a joint agreement between the two sides to use added value schemes on a way that narrows the area of conflict and is mutually beneficial.     

Fuzzy quality-team formation for value added auditing: A case study

Value-added (quality) auditing is emerging as one of the most powerful tools for continuous quality improvement, with the introduction of the ISO 9001:2000 and ISO 19011 standards that focus team-based audits, proper auditor skills, process auditing, and effectiveness, etc. Formation of an effective quality audit team (QAT) based on the required auditor skills is therefore the initial stage of the value added auditing. QATs audit organizations at different locations with varying auditing requirements in order to evaluate an organization's own quality system (first party part audits according to IEC9001 Clause 8.2.2). The QAT consists of a lead auditor and one or more auditors that have the required skills in varying levels for the execution of an audit. For a successful audit, the formation of a QAT is vital since each audit team must at least fulfill the minimum requirements and skills needed for a specific audit. In this case study, a fuzzy mathematical-programming model and a solution algorithm based on “simulated annealing” is proposed for the formation of QATs. This is one of the first attempts in the literature to form this kind of teams analytically. Example problems are also solved in the paper to present the application of the proposed approach.     

A theoretical analysis of the value added intellectual coefficient (VAIC)

Journal of Management and Governance - This paper offers a critical assessment of the value added intellectual coefficient (VAIC) through the analysis of the coherence of the definitions of and...     

Setting tolerance limits for statistical project control using earned value management

Project control has been a research topic since decades that attracts both academics and practitioners. Project control systems indicate the direction of change in preliminary planning variables compared with actual performance. In case their current project performance deviates from the planned performance, a warning is indicated by the system in order to take corrective actions.Earned value management/earned schedule (EVM/ES) systems have played a central role in project control, and provide straightforward key performance metrics that measure the deviations between planned and actual performance in terms of time and cost. In this paper, a new statistical project control procedure sets tolerance limits to improve the discriminative power between progress situations that are either statistically likely or less likely to occur under the project baseline schedule. In this research, the tolerance limits are derived from subjective estimates for the activity durations of the project. Using the existing and commonly known EVM/ES metrics, the resulting project control charts will have an improved ability to trigger actions when variation in a project׳s progress exceeds certain predefined thresholdsA computational experiment has been set up to test the ability of these statistical project control charts to discriminate between variations that are either acceptable or unacceptable in the duration of the individual activities. The computational experiments compare the use of statistical tolerance limits with traditional earned value management thresholds and validate their power to report warning signals when projects tend to deviate significantly from the baseline schedule.     

Conflicting strategic objectives in hospital design

This paper presents a multigoal linear programming model designed to analyse the impact of different strategic objectives in the planning of hospitals. The paper argues that it is necessary to adopt an overall point-of-view in planning; that it is necessary to consider the interactions between the hospital, other social and health institutions and the community at large in order to attain an efficient plan. A simplified cost-benefit analysis is suggested, and it is demonstrated that the opportunity costs of lost working days may be more important than both capital and operating costs from a social point of view.     

Educational objectives and measurement of outcomes

Correlation and regression analysis are often used to infer causal relationships in dynamic systems, even though computed on cross-sectional static data. In education these analytic techniques have been used to support assertions that school-controlled variables make little contribution to student learning. Critics of these assertions point to the low quality of the data, but it may be that the techniques themselves are inappropriate for the development of inferences of causality. This study simulated four possible models of dynamic relationships between family and school inputs and achievement outcomes. The models were run for five periods. Data generated were submitted to correlation and regression analysis. Both unique variance and regression coefficient indicators failed to describe reliably causal relationships built into the models. Conclusion: complex systems resist simplistic analyses.     

Value added distribution of parcels in Japan

Yamato Transport Corporation recently entered the parcels business and has been very successful, taking the largest share of the market, in competition with the Japanese Post Office. By the use of a computerized information system, the company provides a rapid high quality service. Yamoto offers a pick up and delivery service. It uses retail stores for receiving the parcels and every driver has a small ‘point of sale’ terminal. The company has built its transportation network systematically, one step at a time.     

Integrating partner objectives in horizontal logistics optimisation models

In this paper a general solution framework is presented for optimising decisions in a horizontal logistics cooperation. The framework distinguishes between the objective of the group and the objectives of the individual partners in the coalition. Although the importance of the individual partner interests is often acknowledged in the literature, the proposed solution framework is the first to include these objectives directly into the objective function of the optimisation model. The solution framework is applied to a collaborative variant of the clustered vehicle routing problem, for which we also create a set of benchmark instances.We find that by only considering a global coalition objective, the obtained solution is often suboptimal for some partners in the coalition. Providing a set of high quality alternative solutions that are Pareto efficient with respect to the partner objectives, gives additional insight in the sensitivity of a solution, which can support the decision making process. Our computational results therefore acknowledge the importance of including the individual partner objectives into the optimisation procedure.     

Expected utility expressed in terms of moments

Following a review of the problem of establishing a preference ordering over a set of distributions, the principles of Pascal, Bernoulli and Tetens are discussed. The second section of the paper outlines ways of expressing expected utility in terms of moments, thus combining the Bernoulli and Tetens principles. The paper concludes by suggesting that the Tetens principle contains some very strong—and unacceptable—behavioural assumptions.     

Channel coordination in supply chains with agents having mean-variance objectives

This paper investigates the issues of channel coordination in a supply chain when the individual supply chain decision makers take mean-variance (MV) objectives. We propose an MV formulation to capture the risk preference of each individual supply chain agent. Through the studies of a wholesale pricing policy, we find that the incorporation of risk concerns into the setting of supply chain coordinating policy is very important because it can substantially affect the achievability of channel coordination. It is also interesting to find that channel coordination depends on how big the net difference between the risk preferences of the supply chain coordinator and the retailer is. Thus, a slightly risk averse supply chain coordinator can successfully coordinate with a slightly risk prone retailer but not a very risk averse retailer. Numerical analyses are included and managerial insights are developed.     

Restructuring in family firms: Balancing family objectives and economic prosperity

This study analyzes the extent to which family firms adopt distinct restructuring strategies (employee downsizing, management dismissals, asset retrenchment, dividend cuts) in response to declining performance. We hypothesize that family firms select different restructuring strategies than non-family firms because of the mixed gamble between economic benefits and socioemotional wealth (SEW), and that this difference diminishes as the severity of decline increases. The hypotheses were tested with a sample of 357 decline incidences in 283 German firms between 2005 and 2018 and are largely confirmed; at low decline severity, family firms downsize and retrench less, but this tendency is reversed as the severity increases. They tend to cut dividends more strongly and are less willing to dismiss managers, irrespective of their decline severity.     

Behavior Management in a Factory Setting

A multiple-baseline design in which two intervention components of feedback and feedback-plus-praise was applied across 7 departments of a medium-sized furniture manufacturing plant. Daily average worker efficiency was collected for at least 8 weeks in each target department prior to introduction of the first component. This was introuduced in a temporally-staggered fashion across departments, entailed verbal repoll of daily efficiencies to each operative worker, and the visual individual display of this information on chart that were conspicuously posted in the work area. This condition, designated feedback-only, lasted from 8-35 wk. The second component continued with feedback and, in addition, supervisors were coached to contact and praise employees whose efficiencies exceeded predetermined levels or that improved in that direction. This feedback-plus-praise condition was introduced in a temporally-staggered sequence in four departments and lasted from 27 to over 100 weeks. Manipulation checks for graphing and praise were included and a benefits-analysis was conducted. Results were that of 7 relatively independent tests of feedback-only, fully 5 of these resulted in marked and reliable work increases and, of the other 2, one approached significance. Two of 4 tests of the praise component proved reliable and the other two reflected increases in the same direction. Manipulation checks yielded support that feedback was "registered" by all, that praise was given, but not whether the latter was dispensed differentially across project phases. Benefits analyses showed a program-related increase in productivity equivalent to 800-1050 man hours.