Unsold Versus Unbought Commitment: Minimum Total Commitment Contracts with Nonzero Setup Costs

We study a minimum total commitment (MTC) contract embedded in a finite‐horizon periodic‐review inventory system. Under this contract, the buyer commits to purchase a minimum quantity of a single product from the supplier over the entire planning horizon. We consider nonstationary demand and per‐unit cost, discount factor, and nonzero setup cost. Because the formulations used in existing literature are unable to handle our setting, we develop a new formulation based on a state transformation technique using unsold commitment instead of unbought commitment as state variable. We first revisit the zero setup cost case and show that the optimal ordering policy is an unsold‐commitment‐dependent base‐stock policy. We also provide a simpler proof of the optimality of the dual base‐stock policy. We then study the nonzero setup cost case and prove a new result, that the optimal solution is an unsold‐commitment‐dependent (s, S) policy. We further propose two heuristic policies, which numerical tests show to perform very well. We also discuss two extensions to show the generality of our method's effectiveness. Finally, we use our results to examine the effect of different contract terms such as duration, lead time, and commitment on buyer's cost. We also compare total supply chain profits under periodic commitment, MTC, and no commitment.     

Inequities in Higher Education: Issues and Promising Practices in a World Ambivalent about Affirmative Action

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on the legality of race-based affirmative action at universities in 2003. Although the decisions affirmed the legality of considering race in college admissions decisions, their long-term effects are not entirely clear. They neither resolved conflicts nor solved problems affirmative action was intended to address, namely, disparities in educational outcomes between Whites and ethnic/racial minorities. Although disparities have diminished since 1965, policies and practices to sustain and further increase diversity in higher education without affirmative action are needed. This article provides historical and conceptual grounding for this JSI issue, which examines approaches for attaining campus diversity. Collectively, the issue provides approaches for increasing diversity as well as strategies for managing and benefiting from diversity in postsecondary environments.     

Social change in outer city British public housing

This paper offers a detailed examination of the evolution of social patterns within a representative outer council estate in Birmingham, England during 1971–1981. The findings disclose several important changes including a growing association of flatted accommodation with smaller childless households and increasing social deprivation on the whole estate.     

SHORT REVIEWS

Books reviewed in this article: Laurel Bossen, Chinese Women and Rural Development: Sixty Years of Change in Lu Village, Yunnan Fabrizio Butera and Gabriel Mugny (EDS.), Social Influence in Social Reality: Promoting Individual and Social Change Harold Coward and Daniel C. Maguire (EDS.), Visions of a New Earth: Religious Perspectives on Population, Consumption, and Ecology Martha C. Nussbaum, Women and Human Development: The Capabilities Approach Fred C. Pampel, The Institutional Context of Population Change: Patterns of Fertility and Mortality across High‐Income Nations Demetrios G. Papademetriou and Deborah Waller Meyers (EDS.), Caught in the Middle: Border Communities in an Era of Globalization Per Pinstrup‐Andersen and Ebbe Scniøler, Seeds of Contention: World Hunger and the Global Controversy over GM Crops Walter Scheidel (ED.), Debating Roman Demography     

Appendix

Social Indicators Research -     

Sanction Situations and Sanction Interaction Concepts for Action Theory*

This paper proposes two analytical concepts that can be derived from and added to the theory of action. Using these concepts, a systematic exploration of the relationship between the pattern variables and the generalised media is given. A matrix of sanction situations generates four ideal-types of sanction interaction in which actors' orientations are aligned and twelve with misaligned orientations. A link with the joint action of symbolic interactionism is suggested and the use of a more developed concept of interaction recommended.     

Assessing the Potential Impact of the HIV-1 Epidemic on Orphanhood and the Demographic Structure of Populations in sub-Saharan Africa

Much of the debate on the demographic consequences of the HIV epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa has so far centred around the plausibility of population declines in areas where unprecendently high rates of population growth have recently been in evidence. In this article, the authors use a mathematical model, which combines epidemiological and demographic processes, to illustrate how, under a broad range of impacts on population growth, major changes in demographic features, such as the extent of orphanhood within populations, are likely to occur. At the same time, HIV epidemics are liable to cause significant shifts in the age and sex composition of affected populations, which may have important implications for the ways in which they are best able to cope with the increases in orphanhood, as well as those in infant, early childhood and adult mortality.