Using Frontier Analysis to Evaluate Company Performance

The measurement of performance is critical to nearly all managerial disciplines. Yet little is known about the aggregation characteristics of the components of performance and how our notion of a ‘good performing firm’ relates to what we use as a dependent variable. In this paper we propose an approach to the measurement of performance that uses the logic of frontier analysis and the technique of data envelopment analysis. The approach is shown to be a reasonable representation of the multidimensional nature of performance and is shown to replicate, effectively, the components that strategic management scholars typically consider when discussing performance. It is also shown to be superior to the simpler alternatives based on traditional approaches to performance measurement.     

斯柯达转型之谜

在很长的一段时间里，总部位于捷克的斯柯达都是一家名不见经传的公司，可就在不到15年的时间里，这家公司便实现了转型，从一个行业笑料发展成了一家颇受尊重的汽车巨头。秘诀何在？答案是：质量，知识转移，资本价值，时机把握，上市速度。     

Dynamic Global Games of Regime Change: Learning,Multiplicity, and the Timing of Attacks

Global games of regime change—coordination games of incomplete information in which a status quo is abandoned once a sufficiently large fraction of agents attack it—have been used to study crises phenomena such as currency attacks, bank runs, debt crises, and political change. We extend the static benchmark examined in the literature by allowing agents to take actions in many periods and to learn about the underlying fundamentals over time. We first provide a simple recursive algorithm for the characterization of monotone equilibria. We then show how the interaction of the knowledge that the regime survived past attacks with the arrival of information over time, or with changes in fundamentals, leads to interesting equilibrium properties. First, multiplicity may obtain under the same conditions on exogenous information that guarantee uniqueness in the static benchmark. Second, fundamentals may predict the eventual fate of the regime but not the timing or the number of attacks. Finally, equilibrium dynamics can alternate between phases of tranquility—where no attack is possible—and phases of distress—where a large attack can occur—even without changes in fundamentals.     

Institutional voids,international learning effort and internationalization of emerging market new ventures

Much of the existing scholarly works portray institutional voids (IVs) in emerging economies as impeding forces against the development of new ventures. However, little attention has been paid to how such voids generate positive outcomes in emerging market new ventures. Drawing on the institutional theory, we propose IVs as crucial enablers of new venture internationalization. In addition, we investigate both how and when IVs enhance the degree to which new ventures internationalize by examining international learning effort (ILE) as a mediator and two domestic market environmental factors (i.e., environmental dynamism and competitive intensity) as important contingencies. We test our moderated mediation model using primary data gathered from 211 new ventures from Ghana. We found that ILE mediates the relationship between IVs and new venture internationalization and that both environmental dynamism and competitive intensity moderate the indirect relationship between home-country IVs and new venture internationalization. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of this study.     

The adoption of multiple certification standards: perceived performance implications of quality,environmental and health & safety certifications

This study assesses the combined impact of multiple certifications (i.e. ISO 9001, ISO 14001, OHSAS 18001) on perceived performance dimensions related to quality, environmental and occupational health and safety. Using survey data collected from 59 Irish manufacturing plants in 2014, we employed MANCOVA and regression analysis to test our proposed hypothesis. The results suggest that companies that are simultaneously ISO 9001, ISO 14001 and OHSAS 18001 certified are significantly better performers with regard to environmental and occupational health and safety compared to companies without multiple certifications. However, from a perceived quality performance perspective, having these multiple certifications doesn’t seem to be an effective performance improvement tool.     

Engaging with Comparative Risk Appraisals: Public Views on Policy Priorities for Environmental Risk Governance

Communicating the rationale for allocating resources to manage policy priorities and their risks is challenging. Here, we demonstrate that environmental risks have diverse attributes and locales in their effects that may drive disproportionate responses among citizens. When 2,065 survey participants deployed summary information and their own understanding to assess 12 policy‐level environmental risks singularly, their assessment differed from a prior expert assessment. However, participants provided rankings similar to those of experts when these same 12 risks were considered as a group, allowing comparison between the different risks. Following this, when individuals were shown the prior expert assessment of this portfolio, they expressed a moderate level of confidence with the combined expert analysis. These are important findings for the comprehension of policy risks that may be subject to augmentation by climate change, their representation alongside other threats within national risk assessments, and interpretations of agency for public risk management by citizens and others.     

A Screening Methodology for the Identification and Ranking of Infrastructure Vulnerabilities Due to Terrorism

The extreme importance of critical infrastructures to modern society is widely recognized. These infrastructures are complex and interdependent. Protecting the critical infrastructures from terrorism presents an enormous challenge. Recognizing that society cannot afford the costs associated with absolute protection, it is necessary to identify and prioritize the vulnerabilities in these infrastructures. This article presents a methodology for the identification and prioritization of vulnerabilities in infrastructures. We model the infrastructures as interconnected digraphs and employ graph theory to identify the candidate vulnerable scenarios. These scenarios are screened for the susceptibility of their elements to a terrorist attack, and a prioritized list of vulnerabilities is produced. The prioritization methodology is based on multiattribute utility theory. The impact of losing infrastructure services is evaluated using a value tree that reflects the perceptions and values of the decisionmaker and the relevant stakeholders. These results, which are conditional on a specified threat, are provided to the decisionmaker for use in risk management. The methodology is illustrated through the presentation of a portion of the analysis conducted on the campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.     

Sequence Independent Lifting in Mixed Integer Programming

We investigate lifting, i.e., the process of taking a valid inequality for a polyhedron and extending it to a valid inequality in a higher dimensional space. Lifting is usually applied sequentially, that is, variables in a set are lifted one after the other. This may be computationally unattractive since it involves the solution of an optimization problem to compute a lifting coefficient for each variable. To relieve this computational burden, we study sequence independent lifting, which only involves the solution of one optimization problem. We show that if a certain lifting function is superadditive, then the lifting coefficients are independent of the lifting sequence. We introduce the idea of valid superadditive lifting functions to obtain good aproximations to maximum lifting. We apply these results to strengthen Balas' lifting theorem for cover inequalities and to produce lifted flow cover inequalities for a single node flow problem.