The Impact of Wireless Technology on Order Selection Audits at an Auto Parts Distribution Center

Audits of store order pallets or totes performed by auditors at five distribution centers (two experimental and three comparison distribution centers) were used to check for picking accuracy prior to being loaded onto a truck for store delivery. Replacing the paper audits with wireless handheld computers that included immediate auditory and visual feedback was instrumental in increasing the number of audits by nearly 89% without incurring overtime hours for the auditors. Increasing the number of audits meant that more orders were checked for accuracy within an 8-hr shift. The errors and inefficiencies noted with paper audits were eliminated immediately at implementation. The role of the organizational behavior management (OBM) practitioner in designing work procedure changes using technical solutions to accelerate key operational processes was examined.     

The Effects of Computerized Visual Feedback Using Flashing Lights on Order Selection in Large Industrial Settings: Productivity,Accuracy, and Cost Justifications

This report from the field concerns a pilot study that used computerized visual feedback in the form of flashing lights to inform order selectors in an auto parts distribution center to fulfill store orders. Compared to paper pick lists, order selection performance and accuracy reliably increased when the delivery method was the flashing lights. The role of the organizational behavior management participant in industrial settings in designing interventions that increase accuracy and productivity was examined. More than just the intervention, the cost justification was part of the decision-making process about whether to continue with the intervention.     

The Effects of Computerized Auditory Feedback on Electronic Article Surveillance Tag Placement in an Auto-Parts Distribution Center

In this report from the field, computerized auditory feedback was used to inform order selectors and order selector auditors in a distribution center to add an electronic article surveillance (EAS) adhesive tag. This was done by programming handheld computers to emit a loud beep for high-priced items upon scanning the item's bar-coded Universal Product Code (UPC). Adding the auditory component to the visual component of the handheld computer significantly decreased the number of untagged EAS items leaving the facility. The role of the organizational behavior management practitioner in applied settings in designing interventions—some of which can be quite simple and inexpensive, yet add tremendous value—was examined.     

利用RDU评价车牌拍卖和年费方式的支付意愿

城市私车牌照拍卖被认为是控制私车拥有量的有效手段,对此将购车人分为三类,采用依序效用函数和概率权重函数分别讨论了观望效用为常数和变量时本地和外地车牌之间的依赖关系以及买家的支付意愿,从而不仅显示了观望效用对支付意愿的影响,而且也证明了概率权重函数的弹性系数对判断车牌选择倾向、刻画支付意愿大小和区分买家类型都具有重要作用。此外还就新提出的车牌限制措施-年费制度潜在的实施效果进行了分析,说明该制度将导致外地车牌对使用成本的变动更加敏感,而且长期来说也难以为继。     

AN INDEX FOR THE MEASUREMENT OF CONSUMER LOYALTY*

The concept of consumer “loyalty” (i.e., preference for a particular store or brand) is intriguing to marketing scholars and practitioners. Research in this area would be enhanced by the acceptance of an operational measure of consumer loyalty. Loyalty appears to be a tri-dimensional concept; per cent of budget, allocated to the store or brand, amount of switching, and number of alternatives explored have been used to measure loyalty. Consequently, the authors propose a “loyalty index” which combines these three measures. An empirical test of the proposed index showed that the index did discriminate among degrees of consumer loyalty, and was related to consumer psychological characteristics in a manner similar to that of the generally used single measures of consumer loyalty.     

基于管理类国际权威期刊的中国管理科学与工程学科研究现状分析

基于管理科学与工程学科2010~2019年发表在46份国际权威期刊上的13391篇论文数据,利用文献计量学分析方法,从文献发表记录和基金资助文献两个维度对管理科学与工程学科19个领域的研究现状进行分析。研究结果表明:近10年来,管理科学与工程学科的研究热点主要集中在“博弈论”“创新”“定价”“项目管理”“动态规划”和“供应链管理”等方向。美国、中国、英国、加拿大、德国的发文量排名前5位。在发文量最多的5个国家中,中国国家自然科学基金委员会资助的论文数量排名第一位,且信息系统与管理、管理系统工程是获得资助最多的领域。此外,在国家自然科学基金资助项目中,“供应链”是最热门的主题,“交通管理”和“优化”等主题受到较大关注。在中国大陆机构中,香港城市大学、香港科技大学、香港理工大学、香港中文大学和清华大学的发文量位居前5位。     

Designing Service Level Agreements for Inventory Management

Service level agreements (SLAs) are widely employed forms of performance‐based contracts in operations management. They compare performance during a period against a contracted service level and penalize outcomes exceeding some allowed deviation. SLAs have a number of design characteristics that need careful tuning to ensure that incentives are properly aligned. However, there is little theoretical research in this area. Using an example of an SLA for outsourcing inventory management, we make a number of recommendations. First it is preferable, if possible, that penalties be proportional to the underperformance rather than lump‐sum ones. This goes a long way towards mitigating strategic (“gaming”) behavior by the supplier. Second, it might be thought that giving “bonuses for good performance” rather than “penalties for bad performance” are essentially identical apart from the former being a more positive approach to management. This turns out to be incorrect in the case of large percentage service rate targets and that penalties will normally be preferred by the buying firm. Third, in order not to incorrectly penalize underperformance resulting purely from “noise” rather than supplier efforts, management might think it best to make allowed deviations from the target generous. Again intuition is not a helpful guide here: for proportional penalties, acceptable performance deviations should be close to the target. Although these results come from a particular inventory application, it is likely that the lessons are applicable to SLAs in general.     

Computerized Immediate Feedback Increases Product Recall Efficiency Due to Interlocking Contingencies in Food Manufacturing

Food manufacturing companies are challenged with tracking their products so that the company will be able to remove that product from circulation quickly and effectively in the event of a product recall. The accuracy of a recall is dependent upon the accuracy of a product selected for order fulfillment, with the correct product going to the correct store. An integrated solution using wireless handheld computers was programmed to provide immediate visual and audio feedback to the order selectors, in order to prevent errors in order selection. For each case selected, vital information was archived to databases in real-time, which in turn, allowed the company’s safety manager to perform quick and accurate product recall tracking in mock recall drills and state inspections. Results were discussed in terms of the expanding the role of the Organizational Behavior Management professional who addresses operational and ethical issues associated with technologies for better consumer safety.     

MANUFACTURING STRATEGY ON THE “S” CURVE

The concept and techniques of “manufacturing strategy” offer managers the opportunity to use their production function as a strategic weapon in competition, an apparently attractive objective. Yet after about 25 years, the use of manufacturing in corporate strategy (MCS) as a management practice is not widespread. In contrast, however, in academic literature it appears to be flourishing and rapidly growing in popularity. This paper seeks to answer this apparent paradox, beginning with the history of MCS as it was developed as a theory of design to enable a manufacturing system to be focused on a key competitive task. Common criticisms of MCS, such as “tradeoffs,” “focus” and “undynamic,” are examined and refuted as valid reasons for its only modest usage. Instead, three “new” problems in the MCS concept and its techniques are suggested as genuine needs for the completion of the theory and for its becoming more universally understood and used by industrial managers.     

Self‐Service Operations at Retail Stores: The Role of Inter‐Customer Interactions

Inter‐customer interactions are important to the operation of self‐services in retail settings. More specifically, when self‐service terminals are used as part of customers’ checkout processes in retail operations without the explicit involvement of retailers as the direct service providers, inter‐customer interactions become a significant managerial issue. In this article, we examine the impact of inter‐customer interactions at retail self‐service terminals on customers’ service quality perceptions and repeat purchase intentions at retail stores. We conduct a scenario‐based experimental design (N = 674) using a 2 × 2 factorial design in which inter‐customer interactions are divided into “positive” vs. “negative” and occur during the “waiting” or during the actual “transaction” stages of self‐services at a retail store. We use attribution theory to develop the hypotheses. The results demonstrate that, through their interactions, fellow customers can exert influences on a focal customer's quality perceptions and repeat purchasing intentions toward a retail store. Furthermore, these influences were impacted by how customers attribute blame or assign responsibility toward the retail store. Service operations managers should leverage these interactions by designing into self‐service settings the capacities and interfaces that are best suited for customers’ co‐production of their self‐service experiences.     

Contracting in a Supply Chain with Stochastic Demand and Substitute Products

Retailers often stock competing products from multiple manufacturers. When the retailer stocks out of a particular item, customers who prefer the item are likely, with some probability, to switch to a substitute product from another manufacturer at the same store. In such an event, a “lost sale” for the manufacturer is not a “lost sale” for the retailer. This exacerbates differences in manufacturer's and retailer's stockout costs for the item. Such differences in stockout cost influence the optimal contract between the manufacturer and the retailer and also impose agency costs on the channel. Such contracts, in turn, determine equilibrium inventory levels and fill rates. We study these issues in a single‐period supply chain, consisting of a manufacturer and a retailer, under three different scenarios (when the two firms are integrated into a single entity, when the retailer makes stocking decisions, and when the manufacturer makes stocking decisions). We compare, and present a methodology for comparing, stocking quantities, manufacturer efforts, and supply chain profits across different scenarios. We find that VMI performs better when manufacturer effort is a substantial driver of consumer demand and when consumers are unlikely to substitute to another brand in case of a stockout. On the other hand, if non‐contractible manufacturer effort is unimportant, or when substitution is significant, VMI can exacerbate, rather than mitigate, channel inefficiencies, and can perform worse than traditional Retailer Managed Inventory.     

Premature Deaths,Statistical Lives,and Years of Life Lost: Identification,Quantification, and Valuation of Mortality Risks

Mortality effects of exposure to air pollution and other environmental hazards are often described by the estimated number of “premature” or “attributable” deaths and the economic value of a reduction in exposure as the product of an estimate of “statistical lives saved” and a “value per statistical life.” These terms can be misleading because the number of deaths advanced by exposure cannot be determined from mortality data alone, whether from epidemiology or randomized trials (it is not statistically identified). The fraction of deaths “attributed” to exposure is conventionally derived as the hazard fraction (R – 1)/R, where R is the relative risk of mortality between high and low exposure levels. The fraction of deaths advanced by exposure (the “etiologic” fraction) can be substantially larger or smaller: it can be as large as one and as small as 1/e (≈0.37) times the hazard fraction (if the association is causal and zero otherwise). Recent literature reveals misunderstanding about these concepts. Total life years lost in a population due to exposure can be estimated but cannot be disaggregated by age or cause of death. Economic valuation of a change in exposure-related mortality risk to a population is not affected by inability to know the fraction of deaths that are etiologic. When individuals facing larger or smaller changes in mortality risk cannot be identified, the mean change in population hazard is sufficient for valuation; otherwise, the economic value can depend on the distribution of risk reductions.     

Consumers’ Risk Perception of Household Cleaning and Washing Products

A large share of accidental and nonaccidental poisonings are caused by household cleaning and washing products, such as drain cleaner or laundry detergent. The main goal of this article was to investigate consumers’ risk perception and misconceptions of a variety of cleaning and washing products in order to inform future risk communication efforts. For this, a sorting task including 33 commonly available household cleaning and washing products was implemented. A total of 60 female consumers were asked to place the cleaning and washing products on a reference line 3 m in length with the poles “dangerous” and “not dangerous.” The gathered data were analyzed qualitatively and by means of multidimensional scaling, cluster analysis, and linear regression. The dimensionality of the sorting data suggests that both analytically (i.e., written and graphical hazard notes and perceived effectiveness) and intuitively driven risk judgments (i.e., eco vs. regular products) were applied by the participants. Furthermore, results suggest the presence of misconceptions, particularly related to consumers’ perceptions of eco cleaning products, which were generally regarded as safer than their regular counterparts. Future risk communication should aim at dispelling these misconceptions and promoting accurate risk perceptions of particular household cleaning and washing products.     

How car dealers adjust prices to reach the product efficiency frontier in the Spanish automobile market

This paper investigates the relationship between the dynamics of price discounts at the dealership level and product efficiency in the Spanish auto market. Using data envelopment analysis (DEA), product efficiency scores are estimated for 2092 different vehicles commercialized during 2010, using an innovative database that accounts for more than 75 technical attributes of each model. By alternating official and discounted prices on the DEA specification, we are able to propose a measure of competitive improvement in the retailing stage. We also introduce a decomposition of this measure into two indices that account for the “commercial effort” made by the dealer and the “intensification of competition” that results from the discounting efforts of the other dealers. Finally, we explore the importance of a number of drivers of dealer discounts. As expected, the results confirm the existence of an inverse relationship between product efficiency and dealer discount. Also as expected, discounts are significantly larger for generalist brands, aged models and gasoline engines.     

History in Organization and Management Theory: More Than Meets the Eye

Abstract

There has been a growing debate about the role of history in management research with several authors making suggestions on how to bring the two (back) together and others even highlighting the need for a “historic turn”. What we argue in this paper is that, while history was indeed sidelined by the scientization of management since the late 1950s, it started to make a comeback from the 1980s onwards and is increasingly employed in a number of research programs. We stress that the crucial question for management scholars engaging with history (or wanting to do so) is how it relates to theory. First of all, we present a systematic overview of the way history has been used—both at the micro (organizational) and macro-levels of analysis—distinguishing between what we refer to as “history to theory” and “history in theory”. In the former, we consider those research programs, such as (neo-)institutionalism, where history serves as evidence to develop, modify or test theories. In the case of “history in theory” we identify research programs where history or the past are part of the theoretical model itself as a driver or moderator, with “imprinting” as a prime example. Second, we also identify a growing number of studies that go further by displaying what we call “historical cognizance” in the sense of incorporating period effects or historical contingencies into their theorizing efforts. Finally, drawing on our broad overview, we make more specific suggestions for increasing the visibility and influence of history in organization and management theory.     

EFFECTS OF PROBLEM REPRESENTATION AND FEEDBACK ON RATIONAL BEHAVIOR IN ALLAIS AND MORLAT-TYPE PROBLEMS

This paper reports the results of an experiment which investigated the effects of various ways of structuring decision problems under uncertainty (viz, matrix, tree, versus word representations) and various forms of feedback (discussion versus non-discussion of prepared answers conforming to and deviating from the irrelevance of identical outcomes postulate) on consistent choice behavior (i.e., in accordance with this postulate) in the context of Allais and Morlat-type (A & M) problems. The special structure of A & M problems is especially useful for studying such behavior in that it presumably leads to a set of choices that violates this fundamental norm of decision theory. The experiment involved 134 industrial management undergraduates who gambled to improve their grades in a statistics course. The results showed that: (1) structuring such problems as “decision trees” or “decision matrices” had either a detrimental or no beneficial effect respectively on the number of consistent responses; while (2) discussion led to some improvement in consistency over no discussion. The implications of the findings for training in rational decision making are discussed.     

A THREE-PHASE APPROACH TO INSTILLING A CONTINUOUS LEARNING CULTURE IN MANUFACTURING EDUCATION AND TRAINING

We describe a “learn-by-doing” approach that involves the following three phases designed in part to integrate management and engineering curricula and instill a continuous learning philosophy: (1) involve cross-functional teams as “process and business owners” in a replica of a real-life manufacturing/design problem (Do), (2) require teams to not only learn by doing but to then apply or implement what they have learned in phase 1 (Apply), and (3) share best practices and knowledge gained with subsequent participants (Document). These last two phases are essential and potentially the most valuable but are often ignored in the learning process. They can be accomplished either manually or through the use of an electronic bookshelf (e.g., company or school intranet), which is a database system used to collect and store templates of best practices, collective wisdom, and related information associated with learning and operational activities. We describe two of several educational packages we have developed and discuss their impact on our teaching, our students, and practitioners.     

Administrators and technologists: A study of the role and career aspirations of Saudi engineers

This paper presents a study of the job responsibilities, the career aspirations, and continuing education needs of Saudi engineers. A sample survey of 217 Saudi engineers was conducted in 1985. Results indicate that the majority switch to a management career within six years of graduation. The majority of engineers are content with their career. However a significant number would like to make a switch in their career. A typology is suggested which categorizes 12% of Saudi engineers as “disillusioned administrators”, 22% as “ambitious technologists”, 18% as “contented administrators”, and 33% as “loyal technologists”. In general, Saudi engineers realize the necessity of their playing a dual role and wish to develop both their technical and managerial skills through continuing education.     

Cyber risk assessment in small and medium-sized enterprises: A multilevel decision-making approach for small e-tailors

The role played by information and communication technologies in today's businesses cannot be underestimated. While such technological advancements provide numerous advantages and opportunities, they are known to thread organizations with new challenges such as cyberattacks. This is particularly important for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that are deemed to be the least mature and highly vulnerable to cybersecurity risks. Thus, this research is set to assess the cyber risks in online retailing SMEs (e-tailing SMEs). Therefore, this article employs a sample of 124 small e-tailers in the United Kingdom and takes advantage of a multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) method. Indeed, we identified a total number of 28 identified cyber-oriented risks in five exhaustive themes of “security,” “dependency,” “employee,” “strategic,” and “legal” risks. Subsequently, an integrated approach using step-wise weight assessment ratio analysis (SWARA) and best–worst method (BWM) has been employed to develop a pathway of risk assessment. As such, the current study outlines a novel approach toward cybersecurity risk management for e-tailing SMEs and discusses its effectiveness and contributions to the cyber risk management literature.     

Work and Social Reproduction: Two Concepts for Interpreting the Post-Fordist Transition

This article discusses the definitions of the term “work” which could be applied to advanced industrial societies, and which cover an increasingly complex range of activities. The authors' definition can be viewed as an attempt to forge a significant link between economic and sociological analysis, in order to understand the complex connections, typical only of industrial societies, between different forms of work and employment, and the variety of patterns of social reproduction of diverse groups in different periods and contexts.