Search

Each season, the Hajj--the great Muslim pilgrimage to Makkah, Saudi Arabia, one of the largest annual pilgrimages in the world--attracts two to four million pilgrims from all over the world. [...]

Entrepreneurs that were employed by successful industry incumbents prior to founding tend to confer I advantages on their new organizations. We propose and then demonstrate a similar 'network progeny' effect rooted in the social relationships that form among entrepreneurs. Our analysis of new entrants into the Ontario wine industry shows that prefounding friendship ties of the founders of one especially prominent entrepreneurial firm led to significantly higher ice wine prices. This attests to the promise of a network progeny extension of the parent--progeny account of new firm success. Follow-on analysis indicates that this effect is not attributable to an entrant's ability to make ice wines of superior quality or to it having access to better distribution knowledge. We therefore conclude that having a social tie to this prominent entrepreneurial firm generated reflected prominence that enhanced the valuations and therefore prices of wines made by connected market entrants. Key words: organizational studies; economic sociology; entrepreneurship; networks History: Received October 5, 2010; accepted August 24, 2011, by Jesper Sorensen, organizations. Published online in Articles in Advance February 1.0, 2012., Introduction Incumbent organizations serve as training grounds for entrepreneurs (Freeman 1986). In this way, 'spinoffs' (Klepper and Sleeper 2005) inherit valuable technological knowledge, 'spawns' (Chatterji 2009, Gompers et al. 2005) [...]

To authenticate to the full-text of this article, please visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6486.2010.00923.x Byline: Mary O'Sullivan (1), Margaret B. W. Graham (2) Abstract: abstract There are already manifold interactions between business history and management studies but, to date, they have tended to be more particular and patchy than general and systematic. In this introduction we summarize the arguments that scholars from business history, management studies and social science have made for closer contact between these fields which emphasize the benefits to be gained both for theoretical and historical research on business. We highlight how the articles published in this Special Issue show the wide variety of intellectual purposes, approaches, and benefits that closer engagement between business history and management theories might entail. Yet, concerns have also been raised about the value of a closer alliance between business history and management studies and we suggest that they are worthy of further consideration and discussion. To that end, we propose a more deliberate conversation about what it is we do as historians and theorists of business and what we seek to accomplish. Such a discussion would help us not only to better understand the limits to fruitful integration but also how to work together more productively in the collaborations that seem most worthwhile. Author Affiliation: (1)University of Pennsylvania; (2)McGill University Article note: Mary O'Sullivan, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, 3203 Steinberg Hall-Dietrich Hall, Philadelphia, PA 19104-6370, USA (mosulliv@wharton.upenn.edu).

The overuse of its currency processing facilities by depository institutions (DIs) has motivated the Federal Reserve (Fed) to impose its new cash recirculation policy. This overuse is characterized by the practice of cross-shipping, where a DI both deposits and withdraws cash of the same denomination in the same business week in the same geographical area. Under the new policy, which came into effect July 2007, the Fed has imposed a recirculation fee on cross-shipped cash. The Fed intends to use this fee to induce DIs to effectively recirculate cash so that the societal cost of providing cash to the public is lowered. To examine the efficacy of this mechanism, we first characterize the social optimum and then analyze the response of DIs under a recirculation fee levied on cross-shipped cash. We show that neither a linear recirculation fee, which is the Fed's current practice, nor a more sophisticated nonlinear fee is sufficient to guarantee a socially optimal response from DIs. We then derive a fundamentally different mechanism that induces DIs to self-select the social optimum. Our mechanism incorporates a fairness adjustment that avoids penalizing DIs that recirculate their fair share of cash and rewards DIs that recirculate more than this amount. We demonstrate that the mechanism is easy to implement and tolerates a reasonable amount of imprecision in the problem parameters. We also discuss a concept of welfare-preserving redistribution wherein the Fed allows a group of DIs to reallocate (amongst themselves) their deposits and demand if such a possibility does not increase societal cost. Finally, we analyze the impact of incorporating the custodial inventory program, another component of the Fed's new policy. Key words: cash supply chain; coordination; fit sorting; cross shipping History: Received August 1, 2008; accepted September 18, 2009, by Ananth Iyer, operations and supply chain management. Published online in Articles in Advance December 14, 2009., 1. Introduction Despite an increase in the use of electronic payment mechanisms, the total value and volume of physical currency (cash) that is in circulation in the United States has [...]

To authenticate to the full-text of this article, please visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1523-1739.2009.01297.x Byline: JOHN A. HALL (*), ERICA FLEISHMAN ([dagger]) Keywords: adaptive management; demonstration; implementing conservation science; translating science into practice; validating performance and cost Abstract: Abstract: To be relevant to societal interests and needs, conservation science must explicitly lend itself to solving real-world problems. Failure to evaluate under field conditions how a new technology or method performs or the cost of its implementation can prevent its acceptance by end users. Demonstration, defined here as the translation of scientific understanding into metrics of performance and cost of implementation under real-world conditions, is a logical step in the challenging progression from fundamental research to application. Demonstration reduces scientific uncertainty and validates the hypothesis that a management approach is both effective and financially sustainable. Much like adaptive management, demonstration enables researchers and resource managers to avoid trial-and-error approaches and instead conduct unbiased assessment of management interventions. The participation of end users and regulators in the development and execution of demonstration projects ensures that performance measures are credible and increases the probability that successful innovations will be adopted. Four actions might better connect science to the needs of resource managers via demonstration. First, we recommend that demonstration be conducted as a formal process that documents successes and failures. Second, demonstration should be budgeted as an integral component of government agencies' science programs and executed as a partnership between researchers and managers. Third, public and private funders should increase the opportunities and incentives for academics to engage in demonstration. Fourth, social influences on adoption of new technologies and methods should be further explored. When end users can evaluate explicitly whether a new approach is likely to achieve management objectives, save money, and reduce risk under uncertainty, the professional community successfully has bridged a chasm between research and application. Abstract (Spanish): La Demostracion como un Medio para Traducir Ciencia de la Conservacion en Practica Resumen: Para que sea relevante para los intereses y necesidades de la sociedad, la ciencia de la conservacion debe prestarse explicitamente a la solucion de problemas en el mundo real. La falla en la evaluacion, bajo condiciones de campo, de como funciona una nueva tecnologia o metodo o del costo de su implementacion puede impedir su aceptacion por los usuarios finales. La demostracion, definida aqui como la traduccion del conocimiento cientifico en medidas de rendimiento y costo de implementacion bajo condiciones del mundo real, es un paso logico en la progresion de la investigacion basica hacia la aplicacion. La demostracion reduce la incertidumbre cientifica y valida la hipotesis de que un enfoque de manejo es efectivo y sustentable economicamente. Como el manejo adaptativo, la demostracion permite que los investigadores y los manejadores de recursos eviten aproximaciones de prueba y error y, en su lugar, realicen evaluaciones no sesgadas de las acciones de manejo. La participacion de los usuarios finales y reguladores en el desarrollo y ejecucion de proyectos demostrativos asegura que las medidas de rendimiento tengan credibilidad e incrementa la probabilidad de que se adopten las innovaciones exitosas. Cuatro acciones podrian mejorar la conexion de la ciencia con las necesidades de los manejadores de recursos mediante la demostracion. Primero, recomendamos que la demostracion sea conducida como un proceso formal que documenta exitos y fracasos. Segundo, la demostracion debe ser presupuestada como un componente integral de los programas cientificos de las agencias gubernamentales y ejecutada como una asociacion entre investigadores y manejadores. Tercero, los financiadores publicos y privados deben incrementar las oportunidades e incentivos para que los academicos se comprometan con la demostracion, Cuarto, las influencias sociales sobre la adopcion de nuevas tecnologias y metodos deben ser exploradas mas a fondo. Cuando los usuarios finales puedan evaluar explicitamente si un nuevo metodo permitira alcanzar objetivos de manejo, ahorrar dinero y reducir el riesgo bajo incertidumbre, la comunidad profesional habra tendido un puente entre la investigacion y la aplicacion. Author Affiliation: (*)Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program/Environmental Security Technology Certification Program, 901 N. Stuart Street, Suite 303, Arlington, VA 22203-1853, U.S.A., emailjohn.hall@osd.mil ([dagger])National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis, 735 State Street, Suite 300, Santa Barbara, CA 93101, U.S.A. Article History: Paper submitted January 14, 2009; revised manuscript accepted May 1, 2009

Data envelopment analysis (DEA) is known to produce more than one efficient decision-making unit (DMU). This paper proposes a network-based approach for further increasing discrimination among these efficient DMUs. The approach treats the system under study as a directed and weighted network in which nodes represent DMUs and the direction and strength of the links represent the relative relationship among DMUs. In constructing the network, the observed node is set to point to its referent DMUs as suggested by DEA. The corresponding lambda values for these referent DMUs are taken as the strength of the network link. The network is weaved by not only the full input/output model, but also by models of all possible input/output combinations. Incorporating these models into the system basically introduces the merits of each DMU under various situations into the system and thus provides the key information for further discrimination. Once the network is constructed, the centrality concept commonly used in social network analysis--specifically, eigenvector centrality--is employed to rank the efficient DMUs. The network-based approach tends to rank high the DMUs that are not specialized and have balanced strengths. doi: 10.1057/jors.2009.35 Keywords: data envelopment analysis; linear programming; social network analysis; Bonacich centrality

In this paper, we explore how organizations influence the unethical behavior of their employees. Using a unique data set of over three million vehicle emissions tests, we find strong evidence of ethical spillovers from firms to individuals. When inspectors work across different organizations, they adjust the rate at which they pasfvs vehicles to the norms of those with whom they work. These spillovers are strongest at large facilities and corporate chains, and weakest for the large-volume inspectors. These results are consistent with the economics literature on productivity spillovers from organizations and peers and suggest that managers can influence the ethics of employee behavior through both formal norms and incentives. The results also suggest that employees have persistent ethics that limit the magnitude of this influence. These results imply that if ethical conformity is important to the financial and legal health of the organization, managers must be vigilant in their hiring, training, and monitoring to ensure that employee behavior is consistent with firm objectives. Key words: peer effects; spillovers; fraud; corruption; productivity; ethics History: Accepted by Olav Sorenson, organizations and social networks; received May 16, 2007. This paper was with the authors 91/2 months for 2 revisions. Published online in Articles in Advance October 10, 2008., 1. Introduction The influence of organizations on individual behavior has been broadly studied in the economics, sociology, and management literatures. Both theoretical work and empirical research have examined how organizations [...]

Geert Hofstede's book Culture's Consequences is analyzed in terms of its own proposed value dimensions. A political subtext is exposed, which can be described through the rhetorical elements devaluing and overvaluing.

To link to full-text access for this article, visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jet.2004.11.006 Byline: Jay Sethuraman (a), Chung-Piaw Teo (b)(c), Rakesh V. Vohra (d) Abstract: This paper presents two results about preference domain conditions that deepen our understanding of anonymous and monotonic Arrovian social welfare functions (ASWFs). We characterize the class of anonymous and monotonic ASWFs on domains without Condorcet triples. This extends and generalizes an earlier characterization (as Generalized Majority Rules) by Moulin (Axioms of Cooperative Decision Making, Cambridge University Press, New York, 1988) for single-peaked domains. We also describe a domain where anonymous and monotonic ASWFs exist only when there are an odd number of agents. This is a counter-example to a claim by Muller (Int. Econ. Rev. 23 (1982) 609), who asserted that the existence of 3-person anonymous and monotonic ASWFs guaranteed the existence of n-person anonymous and monotonic ASWFs for any n3. Both results build upon the integer programming approach to the study of ASWFs introduced in Sethuraman et al. (Math. Oper. Res. 28 (2003) 309). Author Affiliation: (a) Department of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research, Columbia University, NY 10025, USA (b) SKK Graduate School of Business, Sungkyunkwan University, Seoul, South Korea (c) Department of Decision Sciences, National University of Singapore, Singapore 119260, Singapore (d) Department of Managerial Economics and Decision Sciences, Kellogg Graduate School of Management, Northwestern University, Evanston IL 60208, USA Article History: Received 5 September 2003; Revised 23 November 2004

This research was conducted to verify the influence of perceived service quality on behavioral intentions of customers of Malaysia banking services. The results provide support for association between perceived service quality dimensions such as tangibles, reliability, assurance, and empathy in one hand, and word-of-mouth (WOM) communications, patronage intentions, and complaining behavior in the other. Responsiveness had no influence on any of the dimensions of behavioral intentions. Theoretical and managerial implications of the findings are discussed. Key Words: * Behavioral Intentions * Word-of-Mouth (WOM) * Patronage Intentions * Complaining Behavior * Services Marketing * Perceived Service Quality, INTRODUCTION The issue of customer retention is an important one for service organizations. Ndubisi (2003) has related superior service with customer perceived mutualism (in customer-firm interaction), which is associated with [...]

The influence of positive and negative emotions in management practice is discussed.

Efficacy of methods for handling complex societal problems as part of operations research is discussed.

In this introductory note, we describe the motivation for this special issue on complex systems. We begin by noting the potential management opportunities offered by recent advances in complexity science. After defining the nature of complex systems and the many ways they are expressed in organizations and markets, we briefly describe the main tools and concepts of complexity theory. We close with a brief review of the articles in this issue and their relevance to the interests and concerns of managers., Introduction Networks and complex systems have been the subject of a great deal of recent research. In just the last few years, hundreds of scientific papers have been written on [...]

Stakeholder theory is used to examine moral issues surrounding managerialism, and supports an alternative to it called ethical corporate governance. Its philosophy focuses on responsibility; operational practices and evaluative measures are also provided.

The article differentiates production from operations management using examples from early civilization to the present day. While production is defined as the transformation of effort into end result, operations management is defined as the coordination of organizational processes and resources to achieve production.

A mere seven years ago, the Chicago Public Schools were considered a national disgrace and a state and city embarrassment. Student learning was way below the national average. Costs and [...]

The home team was losing again, but the O.R. analyst didn't mind too much. The spring evening was mild, the beer was cold, and the ballpark was a welcome change […]