Sequencing and Scheduling Appointments with Potential Call‐In Patients

This paper studies appointment scheduling for a combination of routine patients who book well in advance and last‐minute patients who call for an appointment later that same day. We determine when these same‐day patients should be scheduled throughout the day, and how the prospect of their arrivals affects the appointment times of the routine patients. By formulating the problem as a stochastic linear program, we are able to incorporate random and heterogeneous service times and no‐show rates, ancillary physician tasks, and appointment delay costs for same‐day patients who prefer to see the doctor as early as possible. We find that the optimal patient sequence is quite sensitive to the no‐show probabilities and the expected number of same‐day patients. We also develop two simple heuristic solutions to this combinatorial sequencing problem.     

Zero Expected Wealth Taxes: A Mirrlees Approach to Dynamic Optimal Taxation

In this paper, I consider a dynamic economy in which a government needs to finance a stochastic process of purchases. The agents in the economy are privately informed about their skills, which evolve stochastically over time; I impose no restriction on the stochastic evolution of skills. I construct a tax system that implements a symmetric constrained Pareto optimal allocation. The tax system is constrained to be linear in an agent's wealth, but can be arbitrarily nonlinear in his current and past labor incomes. I find that wealth taxes in a given period depend on the individual's labor income in that period and previous ones. However, in any period, the expectation of an agent's wealth tax rate in the following period is zero. As well, the government never collects any net revenue from wealth taxes.     

Multiple facility location on a network with linear reliability order of edges

We study the problem of locating facilities on the nodes of a network to maximize the expected demand serviced. The edges of the input graph are subject to random failure due to a disruptive event. We consider a special type of failure correlation. The edge dependency model assumes that the failure of a more reliable edge implies the failure of all less reliable ones. Under this dependency model called Linear Reliability Order (LRO) we give two polynomial time exact algorithms. When two distinct LRO’s exist, we prove the total unimodularity of a linear programming formulation. In addition, we show that minimizing the sum of facility opening costs and expected cost of unserviced demand under two orderings reduces to a matching problem. We prove NP-hardness of the three orderings case and show that the problem with an arbitrary number of orderings generalizes the deterministic maximum coverage problem. When a demand point can be covered only if a facility exists within a distance limit, we show that the problem is NP-hard even for a single ordering.     

Charisma as signal: An evolutionary perspective on charismatic leadership

We present an evolutionary perspective on charismatic leadership, arguing that charisma has evolved as a credible signal of a person's ability to solve a coordination challenge requiring urgent collective action from group members. We suggest that a better understanding of charisma's evolutionary and biological origins and functions can provide a broader perspective in which to situate current debates surrounding the utility and validity of charismatic leadership as a construct in the social sciences. We outline several key challenges which have shaped our followership psychology, and argue that the benefits of successful coordination in ancestral environments has led to the evolution of context-dependent psychological mechanisms which are especially attuned to cues and signals of outstanding personal leadership qualities. We elaborate on several implications of this signaling hypothesis of charismatic leadership, including opportunities for deception (dishonest signaling) and for large-scale coordination.     

Modeling the demand reduction input-output (I-O) inoperability due to terrorism of interconnected infrastructures.

Interdependency analysis in the context of this article is a process of assessing and managing risks inherent in a system of interconnected entities (e.g., infrastructures or industry sectors). Invoking the principles of input-output (I-O) and decomposition analysis, the article offers a framework for describing how terrorism-induced perturbations can propagate due to interconnectedness. Data published by the Bureau of Economic Analysis Division of the U.S. Department of Commerce is utilized to present applications to serve as test beds for the proposed framework. Specifically, a case study estimating the economic impact of airline demand perturbations to national-level U.S. sectors is made possible using I-O matrices. A ranking of the affected sectors according to their vulnerability to perturbations originating from a primary sector (e.g., air transportation) can serve as important input to risk management. For example, limited resources can be prioritized for the "top-n" sectors that are perceived to suffer the greatest economic losses due to terrorism. In addition, regional decomposition via location quotients enables the analysis of local-level terrorism events. The Regional I-O Multiplier System II (RIMS II) Division of the U.S. Department of Commerce is the agency responsible for releasing the regional multipliers for various geographical resolutions (economic areas, states, and counties). A regional-level case study demonstrates a process of estimating the economic impact of transportation-related scenarios on industry sectors within Economic Area 010 (the New York metropolitan region and vicinities).     

Turning Three Sides into a Delta at General Motors: Enhancing Partnership Integration on Corporate Ventures

General Motors had enjoyed global operations that were based on exports, acquisitions, joint ventures and strategic alliances throughout the 20th century. Its global-programme strategy appeared assured. However, the carmaker came unstuck when it came to creating a large-scale collaborative effort involving its own internal units. The Delta Small Car Program, involving three fully internal GM units, was terminated after its goals failed to materialise. The carmaker’s long-standing cultural tradition of autonomy for its units was what made collaboration between them difficult. We examine this GM global programme, placing it in its historical context. Our primary database consists of the perceptions and experiences offered to us by a cross-section of programme participants. By examining partner integration at the working level, we identify insights and offer recommendations pertaining to venture structure and dynamics and their role in venture success.     

When do Public Managers Imitate Each Other? Mimetic Decision Making in Contracting Decisions of Danish Municipalities

Using organizational new institutional theory, this paper explores a core mechanism underlying contracting decisions in public organizations. A central proposition of this branch of institutional theory is that uncertainty leads to organizational isomorphism. The present study investigates this proposition by asking: When does perceived uncertainty lead public managers to imitative behavior in contracting out decisions? Contrary to most previous studies, we apply an individual level approach and relate different types of perceived uncertainty of decision makers to mimetic decision making. We define mimetic decision making as when decision makers deliberately obtain information about other organizations in order to possibly imitate them. In a survey of Danish municipal managers facing important and complex contracting decisions, we test our hypotheses about three types of perceived uncertainty and mimetic decision making. The results show that technological uncertainty is strongly related to mimetic decision making among public managers. However, we do not find significant results for either volume uncertainty or performance uncertainty. The paper illustrates how uncertainty, through mimetic decision making, is connected to organizational isomorphism. It further highlights that future studies should pay attention to the multidimensionality of uncertainty and its consequences.     

The Potential for Cannibalization of New Products Sales by Remanufactured Products*

The potential for cannibalization of new product sales by remanufactured versions of the same product is a central issue in the continuing development of closed‐loop supply chains. Practitioners have no fact‐based information to guide practice at firms and academics have no studies available to use as the basis for assumptions in models. We address the cannibalization issue by using auctions to determine consumers’ willingness to pay (WTP) for both new and remanufactured products. The auctions also allow us to better understand the potential impact of offering new and remanufactured products at the same time, which provides us insights into the potential for new product cannibalization. Our results indicate that, for the consumer and commercial products auctioned, there is a clear difference in WTP) for new and remanufactured goods. For the consumer product, there is scant overlap in bidders between the new and remanufactured products, leading us to conclude that the risk of cannibalization in this case is minimal. For the commercial product, there is evidence of overlap in bidding behavior, exposing the potential for cannibalization.     

Leading beyond the bottom line, Part 4. The questions it has raised

The Leading Beyond the Bottom Line article series has received an overwhelming response from ACPE members, mostly in enthusiastic support of this new leadership concept. Some of the important questions raised by members are presented with answers from the authors. This article also explores the moral challenge of leadership and why health care is more than a business. In recent years, there's been confusion about the role of the health care enterprise, its leadership and its management. We have lost our way about the "moral" thing, the "right" thing, because we have no philosophy to guide us. To manage or lead in this "business" of health care, a philosophy is required that recognizes the multiple elements to which the leader has responsibility and obligations: the customers, community, employees, and, certainly, the financial assets.