Hierarchische Planung für industrielle Logistikdienstleister

In this paper a planning and control system for logistics service providers (called LPS system) is developed under consideration of their specific flexibility potentials. Due to the complexity of such planning decisions (different planning levels and data quality of these levels as well as time horizons etc.), a multi-stage, hierarchical planning system is proposed which minimizes the relevant costs under consideration of the flexibilities. The advantage of a hierarchical planning concept consists in a limited planning complexity because otherwise data collection and solution development would lead to unsolvable problems in practice. The results of using LPS systems for a real-life case show a significant pay-off for logistics service providers due to the remarkable cost savings by applying a hierarchical planning concept.     

Wie gehen wissensintensive Dienstleister mit eigenen Wissenslücken um?

With the conducted Delphi study diverse alternatives could be identified which have been used by Consultants in dealing with their own unawareness. Superior strategies, which controlled the adoption of individual steps and oriented the activities in dealing with unawareness, as well as organisational regulations for dealing with unawareness, were noticeable, which could be adopted depending on the subjective perception and assessment of the present unawareness and its relevance and impacts. The detected strategies ranged from the maintenance and use of unawareness to open communication and elimination of unawareness to total ignorance and the hiding of unawareness. Concerning organisational regulations, on the one hand formal regulations and on the other hand informal regulations could be found.     

Now What Do People Know About Global Climate Change? Survey Studies of Educated Laypeople

In 1992, a mental‐models‐based survey in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, revealed that educated laypeople often conflated global climate change and stratospheric ozone depletion, and appeared relatively unaware of the role of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions in global warming. This study compares those survey results with 2009 data from a sample of similarly well‐educated laypeople responding to the same survey instrument. Not surprisingly, following a decade of explosive attention to climate change in politics and in the mainstream media, survey respondents in 2009 showed higher awareness and comprehension of some climate change causes. Most notably, unlike those in 1992, 2009 respondents rarely mentioned ozone depletion as a cause of global warming. They were also far more likely to correctly volunteer energy use as a major cause of climate change; many in 2009 also cited natural processes and historical climatic cycles as key causes. When asked how to address the problem of climate change, while respondents in 1992 were unable to differentiate between general “good environmental practices” and actions specific to addressing climate change, respondents in 2009 have begun to appreciate the differences. Despite this, many individuals in 2009 still had incorrect beliefs about climate change, and still did not appear to fully appreciate key facts such as that global warming is primarily due to increased concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and the single most important source of this carbon dioxide is the combustion of fossil fuels.     

Strategies for Addressing the Nursing Shortage: Coordinated Decision Making and Workforce Flexibility

In this article, we present strategies to help combat the U.S. nursing shortage. Key considerations include providing an attractive work schedule and work environment—critical issues for retaining existing nurses and attracting new nurses to the profession—while at the same time using the set of available nurses as effectively as possible. Based on these ideas, we develop a model that takes advantage of coordinated decision making when managing a flexible workforce. The model coordinates scheduling, schedule adjustment, and agency nurse decisions across various nurse labor pools, each of differing flexibility levels, capabilities, and costs, allowing a much more desirable schedule to be constructed. Our primary findings regarding coordinated decision making and how it can be used to help address the nursing shortage include (i) labor costs can be reduced substantially because, without coordination, labor costs on average are 16.3% higher based on an actual hospital setting, leading to the availability of additional funds for retaining and attracting nurses, (ii) simultaneous to this reduction in costs, more attractive schedules can be provided to the nurses in terms of less overtime and fewer undesirable shifts, and (iii) the use of agency nurses can help avoid overtime for permanent staff with only a 0.7% increase in staffing costs. In addition, we estimate the cost of the shortage for a typical U.S. hospital from a labor cost perspective and show how that cost can be reduced when managers coordinate.     

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.     

看不懂的油价

原油期权交易陷入泥沼。石油市场价格剧烈动荡,让关注石油价格的人一时间不知所措。 石油和天然气价格的不稳定让政府官员和政策分析人士们大为不解,他们担心这一状况不利于全球经济回暖。与此同时,由于无法准确预测一年后、甚至一个月后的油价,正在面临剧烈经济衰退的商家和消费者也被捆住了手脚。     

CEO burnout,managerial discretion,and firm performance: The role of CEO locus of control,structural power,and organizational factors

Despite the possibility of burnout resulting from dynamics in firms' upper echelons, little if any work has focused on chief executive officer's (CEO's) burnout and firm performance. Drawing on managerial discretion theory, this article analyzes the influence of CEO burnout on firm performance and the moderating roles of the individual (CEO locus of control), structural power (CEO duality and CEO tenure), and organizational characteristics (size, age, and resource availability) related to managerial discretion. Using a sample of 156 CEOs in Swedish firms, we find a negative association between CEOs who report higher burnout and firm performance. Our results confirm that CEO duality and resource availability ameliorate and firm size exacerbates the negative association between CEO burnout and firm performance. Contrary to our expectations, CEO locus of control, CEO tenure, and firm age do not influence this relationship. We discuss the implications of our research for upper echelons theory and strategic leadership theory.     

Determination of recovery effort for a probabilistic recovery system under various inventory control policies

In this study we investigate the desired level of recovery under various inventory control policies when the success of recovery is probabilistic. All the used and returned items go into a recovery process that is modelled as a single stage operation. The recovery effort is represented by the expected time spent for it. The effect of increasing recovery effort on the success probability together with unit cost of the operation is included by assuming general forms of dependencies. Alternative to recovered items, demand is satisfied by brand-new items. Four inventory control policies that differ in timing of and information used in purchasing decision are proposed. The objective is to find the recovery level together with inventory control parameter that minimize the long-run average total cost. A numerical study covering a wide range of system parameters is carried out. Finally computational results are presented with their managerial implications.