MULTIPLE RATERS IN SURVEY‐BASED OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT RESEARCH: A REVIEW AND TUTORIAL

Research in the area of operations strategy has made significant progress during the past decade in terms of quantity of articles published, as well as the quality of these articles. Recent studies have examined the published literature base and determined that, in general, the field has progressed beyond an exploratory stage to a point where there is a core set of basic terminology and models. Concurrent with the formation and solidification of a core terminology, there is an increasing emphasis on developing and employing a set of reliable, valid, and reproducible methods for conducting research on operations strategy. We provide a review of common methods for assessing the degree of reliability and agreement of the responses provided by multiple raters within a given organization to a set of qualitative questions. In particular, we examine four methods of determining whether there is evidence of disagreement or bias between multiple raters within a single organization in a mail survey.     

Does “fighting back” make a difference? The case of the Canadian auto workers union

Union revitalization requires mutually reinforcing efforts in organizing, political action, and collective bargaining. We examine the experience of the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW). In addition to membership growth, three bargaining outcomes are analyzed: (1) wage gains; (2) the ability to resist a trend towards longer duration collective agreements; and, (3) success in negotiating same-sex spousal recognition. In each of these areas the CAW has articulated a policy and then made gains in both absolute and relative terms. The CAW’s renewal strategy links these bargaining goals with social activism and membership growth through mergers and new organizing.     

Supplier‐Switching Inertia and Competitive Asymmetry: A Demand‐Side Perspective*

Building on strategic management, operations strategy, and supplier management literatures, this article presents a framework for supplier selection from the demand‐side perspective. We highlight the role of a purchasing firm's switching inertia in the supplier‐selection process and demonstrate the usefulness of our framework for the industrial automation industry. Empirical data for this study was collected from 171 corporate and plant‐level executives in pharmaceutical, chemical, and paper‐and‐pulp manufacturing industries in the United States. A series of Web‐based individually customized discrete choice experiments asked the respondents to either switch to the new supplier or stay with the existing supplier. Based on the results of these experiments, we demonstrate the existence of switching inertia in the supplier‐selection process and discuss the managerial implications for incumbent and challenger supplier firms.     

A modified generalized mixed regression estimator when disturbances are nonnormal

A generalized mixed regression estimator for the estimation of the regression coefficients in the linear regression model with incomplete prior information is proposed and its properties are studied considering the risk under the general quadratic loss function when the disturbances are small and non normal.     

Process of Intergenerational Ambivalence: A Qualitative Inquiry

The phenomena of intergenerational ambivalence are often explained in terms of autonomy versus dependency, conflicting norms between generation regarding role expectation in intergenerational relations, and there has been a tendency to believe these factors lead to intergenerational ambivalence. This article intends to explain the family interaction processes that leads to the ambivalence type of relationships. A purposive sample of 185 respondents from 48 families was randomly selected from urban and rural area. The sample comprised father, son, mother-in-law, and daughter-in-law within the joint family. Data were collected through a narrative method and analyzed with a structure model analysis. The data reveal that in the process of interaction, generations have similarities in functional process (physical, economic, and emotional support) but have differences in normative (fulfillment of familial obligation, role, and responsibility) and consensual processes (differences in values and attitude). These differences can lead to negative subjective experiences in terms of stress and strain. Thus, to avoid such situations, participants often used emotion-focused coping approaches also maintaining ambivalence with respect to their intergenerational relationships.     

Effective Design of Products/Services: An Approach Based on Integration of Marketing and Operations Management Decisions*

This paper presents an integrated framework for designing profit‐maximizing products/ services, which can also be produced at reasonable operating difficulty levels. Operating difficulty is represented as a function of product and process attributes, and measures a firm's relative ease or difficulty in meeting customer demand patterns under specified operating conditions. Earlier optimum product design procedures have not considered. operational difficulty. We show that optimum profit, market share, cost, and product profiles are dependent on operating difficulty level. Empirical results from the pizza delivery industry demonstrate the value of the proposed Effective Product/Service Design approach.     

The Effectiveness of Decisional Guidance: An Empirical Evaluation

Decisional guidance is defined as how a decision support system (DSS) influences its users as they structure and execute the decision‐making process. It is assumed that decisional guidance has profound effects on decision making, but these effects are understudied and empirically unproven. This paper describes an empirical, laboratory‐experiment‐based evaluation of the effectiveness of deliberate decisional guidance and its four types. We developed and used a comprehensive model consisting of four evaluation criteria: decision quality, user satisfaction, user learning, and decision‐making efficiency. On these criteria, we compared decisional guidance versus no guidance, informative versus suggestive decisional guidance, and predefined versus dynamic decisional guidance. We found that deliberate decisional guidance was more effective on all four criteria; suggestive guidance was more effective in improving decision quality and user satisfaction, and informative guidance was more effective in user learning about the problem domain, whereas dynamic guidance was more effective than predefined guidance in improving decision quality and user learning; and both suggestive guidance and dynamic guidance reduced the decision time.     

Unionization and Income Growth of Racial Minority Immigrants in Canada: A Longitudinal Study

This study examines the effect of unionization on the labor market integration of newly arrived immigrants in Canada. We find that non‐white recent immigrants gain access to unionized jobs at a slower rate than do white recent immigrants. The effect of unionization on earnings is somewhat lower for non‐white recent immigrants than for white recent immigrants. These findings are based on growth curve modeling of longitudinal data from the Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics (SLID). Therefore, unionization does not contribute to reducing the earnings gap of non‐white recent immigrants relative to white immigrants and the native‐born.     

Mathematical models and their applications in medicine and health

Mathematical models have great potentialities as regards their utility in different disciplines of medicine and health. This paper attempts to elucidate their uses in the field. A brief mention of some models has also been made. Mathematical models are useful in epidemiologic research, planning and evaluation of preventive and control programmes, clinical trials, measurement of health, cost-benefit analysis, diagnosis of patients and in maximizing effectiveness of operations aimed at attaining specified goals within existing resources.