LINKING PROCESS CHOICE WITH PLANT-LEVEL DECISIONS ABOUT CAPITAL AND HUMAN RESOURCES

We examine how process choice links with design decisions about capital and human resources. Our analysis confirms empirically most expected differences between process- and product-focused plants for these decisions. What is unexpected is how top-performing plants resemble other plants within the same process choice category in most respects, while distinguishing themselves on a few selected process attributes. For example, better performing process-focused plants not only achieve higher machine flexibility levels and lower overhead costs as expected, but also have more intensive preventive maintenance programs. Similarly, product-focused plants that achieve certain hallmarks of process-focused plants also enjoy superior performance.     

Individualism/Collectivism Orientations and Reactions Toward Alternative Human Resource Management Practices

In this study, we examined the relationship between individualism collectivism orientations of potential job seekers and their reactions toward alternative human resource management (HRM) practices in the areas of selection, performance appraisal, reward system, career system, and employment security. Using several subdimensions of individualism collectivism, we found many significant relationships between individualism collectivism orientations and preferences for alternative human resource management practices that might affect the effectiveness of alternative HRM practices.     

MODELING TIME-COST TRADE-OFFS IN CPM NETWORKS

A new type of PERT/CPM methodology is introduced whereby the individual activities within a project management network are endowed with resistive and capacitive elements. This methodology will enable us to mathematically define a completion time for the various activities and to relate the completion time to relevant cost in the completion of a particular task. It will also allow us to define the work done, and the rate at which work is being done, in an activity as a function of the applied effort and resource outlay. As a consequence, both the resource expenditure and the work done can be tracked within a network as a function of time.     

A TUTORIAL ON BOTTLENECK DYNAMICS: A HEURISTIC SCHEDULING METHODOLOGY

We give a tutorial on bottleneck dynamics. Bottleneck dynamics is a scheduling framework that uses approximate dual resource prices to make decentralized decisions. The basic idea is to establish a price for a resource as a function of the set of jobs that need to be processed by the resource. Tasks are then sequenced according to a cost/benefit ratio. Starting with one resource sequencing problems, we describe how priorities for jobs can be developed and how they translate into resource prices. We then describe how resource prices can be approximated in a multiresource situation and how lead times which are critical for these approximations can be accurately computed. We also describe a number of studies that have shown bottleneck dynamics to be an effective approach in several different problem areas.     

RESOURCE ALLOCATION TO IMPROVE SERVICE QUALITY PERCEPTIONS IN MULTISTAGE SERVICE SYSTEMS

Service quality improvement has become an imperative in today's service firms. In this paper, we present a modeling framework that combines marketing and operations viewpoints for resource allocation. The framework can be used to allocate resources to the different stages of a multistage service system, where the manager's goal is to improve customers' perceptions of service quality, given some budget. Optimal allocation guidelines are provided, and the interplay of three factors on the resulting allocation scheme is captured. These factors are the current level of customers' perceptions of service quality at each stage, the cost of implementing a service quality improvement at each stage, and the importance placed by customers at each stage. Sensitivity analysis to provide additional managerial insights is also performed. We demonstrate the applicability of the modeling framework, using data from a real life health care environment. Model limitations and future research are also discussed.     

Moving for a ‘better welfare’? The case of transnational Sudanese families

The burgeoning literature on welfare migration, or on the likelihood of migrants moving to countries with more generous welfare states, yields mixed results. In this article, we aim to disentangle what kinds of considerations underlie the decisions that migrants and their families make to address their social protection needs when they move to certain places. We explain how Sudanese extended families, with members scattered across multiple countries, draw on formal and informal institutions to meet their needs for social protection. Through a transnational approach, we analyse the mechanisms guiding the access, circulation and coordination of resources to cover different but related social protection domains. We contribute to current debates on transnational social protection by drawing on the life stories of members of a Sudanese transnational family and by expanding on the concept of ‘resource environment’. We based this article on 14 months of multi‐sited ethnographic fieldwork with Sudanese migrants and their families in the Netherlands, the UK and Sudan.     

A global energy network? The expansion and integration of non‐triad national oil companies

It is widely perceived that the rising influence of state‐owned energy companies from outside the traditional triad (USA, EU, Japan) is transforming the structure of the global energy market and generating a new wave of resource‐nationalism. There is, however, little empirical analysis of how this process has unfolded. Addressing this empirical gap, in this article I employ a longitudinal social network analysis of the changing corporate relations of five major non‐triad state‐owned energy companies in the period 1997–2007. The findings indicate that, in terms of corporate relations, alongside the global expansion of the non‐triad state‐owned energy companies, there was also an increased integration between them and the private energy companies during this decade. This implies that apart from the resurgence of resource‐nationalism – frequently highlighted in academia and politics – this period also witnessed an increasing transnationalization of the global energy market.     

EFFECTS OF OPERATIONAL EMPLOYEE SKILLS ON ADVANCED MANUFACTURING TECHNOLOGY PERFORMANCE

This study employs structured interviews in a field setting to develop an in‐depth understanding of how a specific human resource decision affected manufacturing performance at 30 plants using advanced manufacturing technologies. Initial results suggested that there is no relationship between the skill level of operational employees and the level of performance of the installations. When a measure of “fit” between environmental characteristics and skills was employed, however, there was a significant relationship between the fit measure and performance.     

ALLOCATING AND SCHEDULING MOBILE DIAGNOSTIC IMAGING EQUIPMENT AMONG HOSPITALS

The allocation and weekly scheduling of mobile magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) units leased to a group of hospitals that share the equipment can be a complex problem. Similar problems occur in other domains where expensive equipment or facilities such as video conference facilities, aircraft, and supercomputers are leased. The crux of the problem was determining the number of days and which days of the week various types of equipment types should be leased to hospitals, so as to maximize the rental revenues and satisfy client preferences for days of the week and equipment types. We found rental revenues were a decreasing function of the number of days allocated to a hospital. We considered two sub-problems linked by a set of variables to model the problem. We show that one of these subproblems is a minimum cost network flow problem and the other is an integer multi-commodity transportation problem. We developed a procedure for solving the latter problem by exploiting earlier results for specialized networks. We conducted a computational study to evaluate the performance of this procedure and showed that it generally provides near-optimal integer solutions. We describe the development and implementation of a spreadsheet-based decision support system based on this model. This system was successfully implemented by a small firm with no expertise or prior experience using models.     

Human Resource Management and the Appropriation Learning Perspective

This paper posits the concept ofappropriation to explain the underlyingethos and rationale for seeking to secure thecontribution of people to organizational functioning.Human resource management (HRM) practice is therefore largely underpinnedby the objective of appropriating the human resourcevalue. This is ignored by thepractitioner-oriented literature which has a financialinterest in helping organizations to secure this value,and by the academic literature which is unwilling toconfront the contradictions and uncomfortable truthsinherent in such activities. The traditional approach to appropriation is characterized by suchconcerns as skill-formation, commitment to theorganization, shared corporate values, and a reliance onformally constituted governance structures with aputative integrative ethos. This paper advocates areconstitution of the appropriation regime toincorporate the concepts of knowledge and learning. Wedraw from the innovation management literature tohighlight the problematic nature of appropriation and toclarify the implications of appropriation to themanagement of the knowledge that resides in people.Finally, we suggest how future research might proceed within an Appropriation Learning (A–L)perspective.