Testing for state and local government job queues

Bivariate probit estimates with partial observability identify the factors influencing the worker’s decision to seek a state or local government job and the factors influencing the government’s decision to hire particular workers. The estimates routinely confirm the presence of a local job queue but confirm the presence of a state job queue only when the role of unionization is explicitly recognized. Our results suggest that the net benefits from local and state government employment are greater than those from private sector employment. The estimates also indicate that local governments disproportionately hire racial minorities relative to the local governments’ pool of applicants but indicate no such relationship for state governments. The authors thank Dale Belman, Jugal Ghorai, and Matt Higgins for help on this and related work. We also thank the referee and the editor for useful suggestions.     

TQM: Some issues for deliberation

In this note, the author puts forth some fundamental but generic issues arising from evolving theories and practices of TQM and suggests an agenda for furtherance of research.     

Managing green productivity: Some strategic directions

The twentieth century has been the hallmark for managing total productivity, where the emphasis is towards maximization of outputs commensurate with the consumption of inputs. This is being challenged now to evolve the world class manufacturing strategy requiring a paradigm shift. This shift is towards green productivity, which looks forward to socially appropriate production and consumption aiming at value innovation and resource conservation. This paper is an attempt to outline the concepts and experiential learning about green productivity.     

Some joint distributions for conditional random walks

Joint distributions concerning maxima, minima, and their indices are determined for certain conditional random walks called Bernoulli excursion and Bernoulli meander. The distribution of the local time of these processes is treated by generating function technique. Limiting distributions are also given, providing some partial results for Brownian excursion and meander.     

A formula for P(bi≤Ri≤ai, 1≤i≤m) under a general class of alternatives

Let X_i≤?≤X_m and Y_i≤?≤Y_n be two sets of independent order statistics from continous distributions with distribution functions F and G respectively. Let R_i denote the rank of X_i in the combined order sample. Steck (1980) has found an expression for P(b_i≤R_i≤a_i, all i) when F = h(G), h being the incomplete beta function with parameters (α,β?α+1). An alternative expression for the same probability is obtained which is computationally a substantial improvement on Steck's result.     

Green supply chain management practices in India: an empirical study

This paper presents an empirical study of green supply chain management (GSCM) practices in the Micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) in India. Although the research in the area of GSCM has grown in recent times, the literature has yet to furnish an accepted explanation for why green practices are to be manifested in supply chain management given external and internal pressures. These MSMEs have been involved in such green supply chain practices only to the extent of their participation as suppliers, distributors and in other capacities as business partners. This study confirms and validates that Indian MSMEs face significant pressures from external stakeholders to adopt GSCM practices. Among internal pressures, on-the-job training forces MSMEs in India to adopt GSCM practices. It has been also established that external pressures and adoption of GSCM are fully mediated by internal pressures.     

Choosing a diversification project in a regulated economy

Choosing a diversification project in a regulated economy involves consideration of a large number of micro and macro issues. In order to make an optimal choice of strategy, a formal approach to diversification planning is necessary. This article develops an approach which aims at breaking up the problem of identification and selection of projects into manageable components. The approach involves three steps: identification of broad industry groups: identification of specific projects within each broad industry group; and comprehensive feasibility study. The major benefit of this approach lies in providing a systematic mechanism for reducing the number of alternatives and in recognizing the link between the internal management processes of strategy formulation with the political and administrative processes in government and regulatory bodies. The article is based largely on the Indian experience.     

A Multiobjective Approach and Empirical Application of Sales-Organization Design

This paper addresses the critical issue of determining the appropriate structural design of a sales organization. We propose a new approach for organizing the selling function using multiobjective modeling techniques. The proposed approach considers the situational characteristics under which the sales organization operates, trade-offs among multiple sales-effectiveness criteria, and the “fit” between the situational characteristics and the structural dimensions (i.e., the structure-contingency relationships). Using data collected from sales branches of brokerage firms, we develop appropriate structural designs for a sales organization using the proposed procedure. The paper concludes by outlining the various decision-making implications of the approach.     

Excursion and meander in random walk

Bernoulli bridge, excursion and meander are defined on the symmetric random walk similarly to Brownian bridge, excursion and meander (cf. Chung 1976). Distributions of certain characteristics defined on these Bernoulli processes, which are of a combinatorial nature, and their limits are obtained. Using weak convergence, these derivations give a verification of some of the earlier results on Brownian excursion and Brownian meander, as well as some new results.