Impact of metric-alignment on supply chain performance: a behavioral study

PurposePrevious research has shown that firms are struggling to incorporate collaboration among supply chain partners. This paper presents a new approach to incorporate collaboration using metric-alignment. The analysis provides key insights regarding the usefulness of this approach to synchronize decision-making that leads to reduced bullwhip effect, less backordering and lower supply chain costs.Design/methodology/approachThis research is based on a large-scale behavioral study comprising 556 participants in multi-echelon supply chain games. Supply chain decisions from these experiments are evaluated to study the impact of metric-alignment on managerial decision-making and the corresponding effects on the overall supply chain performance.FindingsResults show that the metric-alignment approach offers an informal and self-enforced governance mechanism that changes managerial decision-making behaviors and improves supply chain performance. Results also show this approach to yield operational and financial benefits for all supply chain partners in the form of reduced bullwhip effect, less backordering and lower supply chain costs.Originality/valueThis is the first behavioral study of its kind that evaluates a new approach to incorporate collaboration in supply chains using metric-alignment. This approach avoids the shortcomings of current industry practices of using monetary penalties, such as on-time in-full (OTIF) mandates in supply contracts. The study shows that metric-alignment approach can improve overall supply chain performance while offering mutually beneficial rewards for all supply chain partners.

I give discounts, I share information, I interact with viewers: a predictive analysis on factors enhancing college students' purchase intention in a live-streaming shopping environment

Purpose Grounding the research in the stimulus-organism-resource (S-O-R) framework, this study aims to address the research gap of explaining and predicting the relationship between price discounts, interactivity and professionalism on college students’ purchasing intention in live-streaming shopping. It also attempts to understand if trust plays the role of mediator in the effect of these relationships. Design/methodology/approach This study collected data using a questionnaire protocol adapted and refined from the original scales in existing studies. The partial least squares structural equation modeling was used to analyze data collected from 258 college students in China. Other than assessing the path model’s explanatory power, this study examined the model’s predictive power toward predicting new cases using PLS predict. Findings Results indicated that all three predictors have a positive significant relationship with trust, while only price discounts demonstrate a significant relationship with purchase intention. Simultaneously, the mediation results provide support to the S-O-R framework demonstrating that external factors (professionalism, interactivity and price discounts) can arouse organism (trust), which in return, generate a behavioral outcome (purchase intention). Originality/value This study is the first few studies that focus on college students’ behavioral responses in an online shopping environment. At the same time, this is the first study supplement the explanatory perspective with a predictive focus, which is of particular importance in making sound recommendations on managerial decision-making.

Simulation-based decision-making system for optimal mine production plan selection

Price uncertainty is one of the major uncertainties in the life of mine (LOM) planning process which can have a decisive effect on the overall profitability. Today’s mine planning software tools provide block-sequencing optimisation for a given static price assumption that is then used as a basis of managerial decision-making process. This paper proposes a complementary approach to this by introducing a simulation-based decision-making tool that, with the help of simulation, seeks for the optimal mine plan when a managerially estimated price development with minimum and maximum boundaries is used as a data input for the given period. To demonstrate the approach, a realistic gold mine case study is presented with five alternative and technically feasible mine plans calculated in a static optimiser from a commercial mine planning software package. These mine planning scenarios are then subjected to price uncertainty in simulation with and without a price trend assumption to highlight the effect of price on the mine’s expected performance. Based on the results, we derive and demonstrate a simulation-based system that automates the matching of optimal mine plan with the managerial insight of long-term price development.

Service ecosystems: why the media industry prefers access, not ownership

Purpose Because of the increasing importance of access over ownership, the purpose of this paper is to propose a service ecosystem perspective to help managers navigate hypercompetition. With the rise of cloud-based services and the ongoing recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, the global economy has shifted toward hypercompetition, a state characterized by organizational advantages that are rapidly created and then destroyed by intense competitive moves. Because advantages are quickly eroded, organizations must be aggressive in the number of actions they take and the speed with which they execute these actions. The service ecosystem perspective focuses on relationships that allow organizations to jointly adjust to one another and to their environment. Design/methodology/approach This paper first reviews traditional strategies for navigating hypercompetition. Then, it presents an explanation of the service ecosystem perspective. Finally, the three north stars and media examples are provided. Findings The service ecosystem perspective asserts “north stars” that can guide managerial decision-making in hypercompetitive environments. These north stars are: cultivate system norms, facilitate feedback loops and embrace servitization. Originality/value In today’s world, organizations are increasingly seeking access to resources instead of ownership of them. The proposed approach suggests that, rather than an organization owning the resources it needs to achieve advantages, organizations are increasingly relying on accessing resources by coordinating with other organizations to draw upon the resource(s) as needed, without incurring the additional burdens of ownership. Examples from the media industry are used to illustrate the three north stars of the service ecosystems perspective.

How to de-bias investment judgements–unpacking bias and possible remedies in a capital investment context

PurposeResearch on biases in investment decision-making is indubitably important; however, studies in this context are relatively scarce. Unpacking bias has received attention in the psychological literature yet very little attention from management accounting research. This bias suggests that the perceived probability that an event will occur generally increases when the event's description is unpacked into a disjunction of subevents. The authors hypothesize that for a capital investment decision context, managers' judgement of the probability of a future event depends on whether the event is described as one packed event or is unpacked into several disjoint subevents. Additionally, the authors propose that altering the format of the description of an event's occurrence from percentage values to relative frequencies reduces unpacking bias.Design/methodology/approachTo test the study’s hypotheses, the authors conducted two experiments based on a 3 × 2 mixed experimental design in which manager participants were asked to estimate the failure probabilities of technical systems in the context of an investment decision.FindingsThe authors provide evidence that unpacking bias occurs in an investment scenario, which can be characterized as a high-stakes decision context. Changing the format in which probabilities are presented from percentage values to relative frequencies significantly reduces the bias.Research limitations/implicationsAdditional instructions did not further reduce unpacking bias.Practical implicationsFor investment decisions under uncertainty, performance indicators in management templates should be presented in relative frequencies to improve managerial decision-making. The fact that the authors could not show an additional effect of instructions in management accounting reports indicates that it is challenging for management accountants to reduce the biased decision-making of managers by “teaching” them through the provision of instructions.Originality/valueThe authors contribute to accounting research by illustrating unpacking bias and by deriving a debiasing mechanism in a capital investment decision context.

A NOVEL APPROACH FOR RECRUITMENT PROCESS IN HUMAN RESOURCES MANAGEMENT

Discovering and using valuable and meaningful data which is hidden in large databases can have strategic importance in the managerial decision making process for organizations to gain competitive advantage. With the increasing data flow, it has become more difficult for organizations to store this data and gain useful knowledge to manage their business operations and functions. Knowledge discovery process that is based on data mining methods has widely been used in business operations and management functions.This paper investigates formal concept analysis which is a powerful tool in knowledge representation and discovery and explains association rule mining based-on formal concept analysis. An experimental study is given for employee selection function ofHRM by using formal concept analysis method to model the qualifications of candidates which are needed for the job position. The qualifications of the candidates are modelled with concept lattices and the qualifications of the candidates are matched with the ones determined in the job specification.

VALUE AT RISK AS A TOOL FOR ECONOMIC-MANAGERIAL DECISION-MAKING IN THE PROCESS OF TRADING IN THE FINANCIAL MARKET

Research background: Risk is an integral part of the world of financial markets today. One of the best known and widespread methods of quantifying the risk of a securities portfolio is the concept of value at risk (VaR). The method quantifies the maximum possible loss of a securities portfolio for specific variables. We used the work of Carol Alexander as a basis for our contribution, whence we borrowed mathematical formulas and derivatives of normal linear VaR and VaR scaling. Purpose of the article: The aim of this study is to design our own method of using the VaR calculation in the trading process and to practically verify the explanatory power of such calculation. To meet this goal, we used our own designed and adjusted formulas to calculate normal linear VaR and scaling VaR. Methods: The purpose of these adjusted formulas is to calculate specific levels of significance of specific scenarios of the course of trading positions, which represent the probability of their occurrence. Subsequently, we used regression analysis and constructed two regression models to verify that the significance levels themselves were significant variables, and that they could explain the variability of the explanatory variable to such an extent that they could be considered as strong predictors in the trading process. Findings & Value added: Based on such research, we find that the resulting levels of significance of our proposed VaR calculation formulas are significant. Based on the compiled regression models, we also find that the dependence we identified is a strong one and can therefore be considered as systematic. Nevertheless, the materiality levels could explain only a small proportion of the variability of the variable being explained, and therefore could not be considered as strong predictors and thus involved in the trading process itself.

On the Frequency of Monitoring and Updating a Company's Strategic Business Development Plans

Amid economic or political uncertainty, strategic planning is an integral attribute of the success of entrepreneurial activities. Strategic planning has a special advantage over other types of business planning, namely its dynamic nature, when the draft plan is adjusted to the changed conditions of the economic environment. But the launch of the plan adjustment process is complicated by the need to select significant indicators of economic processes, on the basis of which the adjustment will be made. The main tool for the company’s management team to address the question of the frequency of the plan updating is the use of accounting and financial statement indicators. The purpose of the work is to analyze alternative methods of making managerial decisions in relation to the adjustment of strategic plans of the enterprise development. The main disadvantages of the management control system are identified on the basis of accounting and financial statements. The authors suggest such alternatives as making management decisions on the basis of intuitive understanding of the economic reality and the use of neural networks to monitor the economic environment at both the macro and micro levels, in order to trace any deviations from the specified vector of development. They also highlight the main advantages and disadvantages of the proposed tools. Thus, the main disadvantage of the intuitive managerial decision-making is the loss of verifiability of the proposed response measures; as for artificial neural networks, the main disadvantages here are a complex mathematical apparatus and a very time-consuming process needed for the effective network training.

FORECASTING THE ECONOMIC PROCESS USING ECONOMETRIC ANALYSIS

The article considers the necessity of using econometric research methods in the analysis and forecasting of economic processes and phenomena. A concrete example of managerial decision making examined in the given article is based on the assumption of an econometric model and it’s ability to analyze the effectiveness of applying different types of advertising on the company's activities