Operations Risk Management: Overview of Paul Kleindorfer's Contributions

This paper reviews Paul Kleindorfer's contributions to Operations Management (OM), with a special focus on his research on risk management. An annotated bibliography of selected other contributions reviews the breadth of topics that have occupied Kleindorfer's research attention over his now 45 + years of research. These include optimal control theory, scheduling theory, decision sciences, investment planning and peak load pricing, plus a number of important applications in network industries and insurance. In the area of operations risk management, we review recent work that Kleindorfer and his colleagues in the Wharton Risk Center have undertaken on environmental management and operations, focusing on process safety and environmental risks in the chemical industry. This work is directly related to Kleindorfer's work in the broader area of “sustainable operations”, which he, Kal Singhal and Luk Van Wassenhove recently surveyed as part of the new initiative at POMS to encompass sustainable management practices within the POMS community. Continuing in the area of supply chain risks, the paper reviews Kleindorfer's contributions to the development of an integrated framework for contracting and risk hedging for supply management. The emphasis on alignment of pricing, performance and risk management in this framework is presaged in the work undertaken by Kleindorfer and his co‐authors in the 1980s on after‐sales support services for high‐technology products. This work on supply chain risk, and its successors, is reviewed here in light of its growing importance in managing the unbundled and global supply chains characteristic of the new economy.     

气候预测发展纵览

气象灾害何其多 2009年1月,联合国降低灾难国际策略小组公布了2008年全年自然灾害统计资料,死亡人数最多的前10件自然灾害中,有9件是天气或气候因素引发的。2008年5月侵袭缅甸的那耳吉斯台风排名第1,死亡人数高达138366人,比排名第二的四川汶川大地震还多了5万余人。全球全年死于自然灾害的总人数超过23万人,受到影响的人数至少有2亿,若不列入汶川地震,估计的经济损失仍高于960亿美元。     

Eight‐Month‐Old Infants' Perception of Possible and Impossible Events

This study investigated 8‐month‐old infants' perception of object permanence in an extension of the rotating screen studies by Baillargeon (1987) and Baillargeon, Spelke, and Wasserman (1985). Using computer‐animated stimuli similar to the “live” stimuli used by Baillargeon and her colleagues (Baillargeon, 1987; Baillargeon et al., 1985), 48 8‐month‐old infants were habituated to 1 of 4 computer‐animated events and then tested on all 4 events. The events involved a screen that rotated in either a 180° or 120° arc*** and a block that either was sitting in the path of the rotating screen or absent from the event. The results provided no evidence that infants responded on the basis of the possibility or impossibility of the events as claimed by Baillargeon and her colleagues, but instead indicated that the infants responded on the basis of perceptual novelty. These results are consistent with the findings of Schilling (this issue) and Bogartz, Shinskey, and Schilling (this issue). Taken together, along with the findings of Rivera, Wakeley, and Langer (1999), these more recent findings suggest that Baillargeon's (1987; Baillargeon et al., 1985) results should not be interpreted as definitive evidence of object permanence in very young infants.     

The early institutionalists on industrial democracy and union democracy

Conclusion  Today the term “industrial democracy” has a rather quaint sound, at least in the U.S., and is seldom encountered in either academic or practitioner industrial relations. Likewise, the work of the early institutional economists is infrequently cited by modern IR scholars and even less often read. So, one may ask, why re-plow this intellectual ground when it has so long lain fallow?     

立足于实用主义而非怀疑主义的关联主义

关联主义理应解释为什么下面支持怀疑主义的论证看上去是合理的 :(1)我不知道我不是一个无躯体的瓮中之脑 ;(2 )如果我知道我有双手 ,那么我就知道我不是一个无躯体的瓮中之脑 ;(3)因此 ,我不知道我有双手。基斯·德罗斯断言 ,(1)和 (2 )“初看起来是合理的”。然而 ,(1)初看起来是合理的仅仅因为它的背后有一个隐含的论证 ;它并不是直觉上合理的。德罗斯的论证是建立在对真的敏感性要求的基础上的 ,即如果你知道某事 ,那么如果它是假的 ,你就不会相信它。但敏感性要求自身并非知识的充分和必要条件。因此 ,它所支持的 (1)以及关联主义所要解释的怀疑主义的论据都不能成立。虽然怀疑主义不是关联主义的一个合理的理由 ,但某些实用主义的理由却是。按照某种实用主义的理由 ,知道某件事 ,当所涉及的事情越是利害攸关 ,所要求的证据也就越多。处理怀疑主义最好的办法是批判支持它的论证。关联主义不应该当作满足怀疑主义的手段 ,尽管还有其他一些实用主义的理由支持关于知识的关联主义     

Embodying Psychological Thriving: Physical Thriving in Response to Stress

In addition to the context of psychological health, thriving can be measured in the context of physical health. Moreover, thriving may be operationalized at a macro level (e.g., improved functional health status following acute illness or injury) or at a micro level (e.g., hormonal balance). The goal of this article is to examine physical thriving at the micro level, by investigating hormonal responses to stressful situations. In addition, we examine the role that psychological factors play in this relationship. Although stress-induced arousal has traditionally been viewed as negative, certain endocrine responses to stress can be health enhancing. Specifically, we propose that physical thriving results when there is a greater amount of growth promoting or anabolic hormones (e.g., growth hormone) than catabolic hormones (e.g., cortisol). Characteristics of the stressor (duration, frequency, and controllability) as well as psychological moderators such as one's cognitive appraisal of the stressor (threat versus challenge) play a role in determining the profile of response to stress. When an individual appraises intermittent stressors as controllable, she or he may display a resilient profile of stress hormone responding—rapid cortisol responses with quick recovery, and more importantly, cortisol adaptation when faced with similar stressors over time. This stress response is in turn related to better health. To substantiate some of these issues, we present data from a study examining women's cortisol reactivity in response to a repeated laboratory stressor and their self-reported growth from facing trauma. The results suggest that women who have grown psychologically from trauma may show quicker cortisol habituation to other stressors. Cortisol adaptation to stress may serve as one potential marker of resilient psychological and physical functioning.     

Perceived risk,emotions, and stress in response to COVID-19: The interplay of media use and partisanship

Relationships between risk perceptions, emotions, and stress are well-documented, as are interconnections between stress, emotion, and media use. During the early COVID-19 pandemic, the public responded psychologically to the threat posed by the pandemic, and frequently utilized media for information and entertainment. However, we lack a comprehensive picture of how perceived risk, emotion, stress, and media affected each other longitudinally during this time. Further, although response to the pandemic was highly politicized, research has yet to address how partisan affiliation moderated relationships between risk, emotion, stress, and media use over time. This three-wave (N = 1021) panel study assessed the interplay of risk, emotion, stress, and media use for Americans with different political affiliations between March and May of 2020. Findings indicate that perceived risk, emotion, and stress at Time 1 predicted media use at Time 2, with predictors varying by type of media. Use of entertainment media and social/mobile media predicted later stress (Time 3), but news consumption did not. Later risk perceptions (Time 3) were not influenced by media use at Time 2. The predictors and consequences of different types of media use were notably different for Republicans and Democrats. In particular, risk perceptions predicted greater news use among Democrats but greater entertainment media use among Republicans. Moreover, social/mobile media use resulted in perceiving the risks of COVID-19 as less serious for Republicans while increasing stress over time for Democrats.