Understanding the complexity of knowledge integration in collaborative new product development teams: A case study

Knowledge integration is important in collaborative new product development (Co-NPD). The research literature shows that the way actors create a shared understanding about the new to create products is a quality indicator of Co-NPD. This study investigates what factors influence the creation of a shared understanding in Co-NPD. The results show factors at three different levels; the actor, project and company level. Additionally, there exist relationships across the factors. The related factors form four different types of interfaces. The interfaces differ from each other since different types of collaborative mechanisms exist within them.     

MATCHING IN INFORMAL FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS

This paper analyzes an informal financial institution that brings heterogeneous agents together in groups. We analyze decentralized matching into these groups, and the equilibrium composition of participants that consequently arises. We find that participants sort remarkably well across the competing groups, and that they re‐sort immediately following an unexpected exogenous regulatory change. These findings suggest that the competitive matching model might have applicability and bite in other settings where matching is an important equilibrium phenomenon. (JEL: O12, O17, G20, D40)     

TEACHING SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT THROUGH GLOBAL PROJECTS WITH GLOBAL PROJECT TEAMS

In this article, we describe the Global Project Coordination Course, a course in which project teams composed of three students from each of two overseas universities execute company‐sponsored projects dealing with global supply chain management issues. The $75,000 to $100,00 contributed in total by the three to four sponsoring companies funds all course expenses. We assess the benefits and challenges of the use of cross‐cultural project teams with diverse educational backgrounds. We conclude that the course provides a unique and effective vehicle for furthering students' knowledge of Supply Chain Management and Information Systems, improving understanding of “soft” issues, and training students to work in diverse, global, cross‐cultural project teams.     

The matching extension problem in general graphs is co-NP-complete

A simple connected graph G with 2n vertices is said to be k-extendable for an integer k with \(0<k<n\) if G contains a perfect matching and every matching of cardinality k in G is a subset of some perfect matching. Lakhal and Litzler (Inf Process Lett 65(1):11–16, 1998) discovered a polynomial algorithm that decides whether a bipartite graph is k-extendable. For general graphs, however, it has been an open problem whether there exists a polynomial algorithm. The new result presented in this paper is that the extendability problem is co-NP-complete.     

On the NEH heuristic for minimizing the makespan in permutation flow shops

Over the last 20 years the NEH heuristic of Nawaz, Enscore, and Ham published in this journal has been commonly regarded as the best heuristic for minimizing the makespan in permutation flow shops. In recent years some authors claimed to develop new heuristics that are competitive or outperform NEH. Our study reveals that these claims are not justified. We also address the issue of a fair comparison of the NEH results with those obtained by metaheuristics. Finally we conduct a thorough analysis of NEH leading to its modification which secures the optimality in the two-machine case and improves the general performance.     

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。     

The Relation Between Popularity and Aggressive,Destructive, and Norm‐Breaking Behaviors: Moderating Effects of Athletic Abilities,Physical Attractiveness,and Prosociality

The aim of this study was to examine the relations between popularity and different types of aggressive, destructive, and norm‐breaking behaviors in a large cross‐sectional sample of adolescents (N=3,312, M age=13.60). We were interested in the extent to which the relations of these behaviors with popularity were moderated by positive features (i.e., athletic abilities, physical attractiveness, and prosociality). From a goal‐framing perspective, it was argued that positive features evoke positive affect, which in turn enhances the positive impact of aggressive, destructive, and norm‐breaking behaviors on popularity. The results supported our notion that these latter behaviors are especially related to popularity in adolescents who also exhibit positive features.