Foreword: Special Issue on Retail Operations

This article draws on my field research in the retailing industry to identify the operational challenges faced by retailers and the relevance of those challenges to senior retail managers and researchers in operations management. It summarizes areas of research in retail operations that have evolved recently and are likely to be important in the future.     

The effects of coauthorship on the quality of financial research papers

This paper analyzes whether formal collaboration in terms of coauthorship enhances paper quality in financial research. Analyzing all papers presented at DGF annual meetings in the period from 1996 to 2005, we report the following major findings: First, we find superior paper quality of coauthored papers compared to single-authored papers. This holds true for two quality proxies, publication probability and publication quality (as measured by the original and the updated Jourqual rating). Second, the capability of scholars, measured by a citation measure derived from citations in Google Scholar, shows to be an additional important factor for explaining paper quality. Third, the employed methodology of a paper (e.g., empirical analysis, theoretical analysis) does not systematically affect paper quality. However, it is important to differentiate between empirical and theoretical papers. Whereas coauthorship shows to be a quality enhancing factor for empirical papers, this does not hold true for theoretical papers. Fourth, the origin of data is a crucial determinant of the publication success for empirical papers. In particular, papers which exclusively analyze data from Germany are published in less reputable journals.     

The use of government publications: A selected review of the literature

Library surveys, citation studies, and user surveys concerned in whole or in part with the use of government publications are examined and their findings compared. While similar use patterns of government publications are found, differences in methodologies make comparison difficult. The author suggests that more attention to prior studies is needed and guidelines for categories of analysis in future studies are advisable.     

A survey on nonadaptive group testing algorithms through the angle of decoding

Group testing, sometimes called pooling design, has been applied to a variety of problems such as blood testing, multiple access communication, coding theory, among others. Recently, screening experiments in molecular biology has become the most important application. In this paper, we review several models in this application by focusing on decoding, namely, giving a comparative study of how the problem is solved in each of these models.     

Distance constrained vehicle routing problem to minimize the total cost: algorithms and complexity

Journal of Combinatorial Optimization - Given $$\lambda >0$$ , an undirected complete graph $$G=(V,E)$$ with nonnegative edge-weight function obeying the triangle inequality and a depot...     

Industry and the environment: a case study of cleaner technologies in selected European countries

The aim of this case study is to discuss the role of technology in addressing environmental problems. The paper tries to scratch beneath the surface of the increasingly frequent ‘quick-fix’ solutions to the present environmental problems, based on such beguiling catchwords as Cleaner Technologies, Best Available Technologies, and Best Available Technologies Not Exceeding Excessive Costs, etc., in an attempt to discover whether there is any substance in them, or whether they are just full of hot air. Recent data from case studies performed by the author in Germany and Finland as well as a postal questionnaire in Denmark are presented. The paper analyses and discusses the roles and responsibilities of designers, industrialists, and government policy-makers. It is argued that existing regulatory regimes, supranational industrial structures, and market mechanisms do not favour the development of cleaner technologies, nor do they promote a reduction in consumption patterns. Evidence from ongoing empirical research in Northwest Europe suggests that industry is far from developing and/or implementing cleaner technologies. The paper closes with a discussion of some of the policy implications involved and some examples of urgently needed further research.