Identifying Critical Success Factors for Supply Chain Excellence

This paper presents a research framework for studying supply chain excellence, emphasizing two distinct paths of knowledge acquisition, that is qualitative inquiry through interviews with senior supply chain executives in Taiwan and quantitative inquiry through data collection from companies that operate in Taiwan. Four factors are considered as the antecedents of supply chain excellence, such as collaboration, organizational conditions, technology adoption, and operations. The authors use the grounded theory approach to further understand those four critical factors and relevant concepts. Organizational condition was ranked by our senior supply chain executives as the most important factor based on this qualitative investigation. The effect of four critical factors on organizational performance is also assessed through regression analyses, and the results help supply chain professionals in Taiwan determine which factors and concepts of supply chain management to focus on to improve business performance. Although these findings are situation-dependent, the proposed framework is different from existing literature and can be adopted in other international studies to enhance the body of knowledge on supply chain management.

Strategic Information Systems Planning (SISP)

This study examines the use of formal Strategic Information Systems Planning (SISP) approaches and methodologies in Australia. The authors analyze the relationships between SISP success, SISP objectives, company size/type and SISP approaches and methodologies. The authors find that the most popular methodologies are not the most successful. Emerging methodologies, such as Fuzzy Cognitive Maps and Information Engineering, could be considered for improving the success of SISP. They also find that a combination of SISP approaches is more successful than the implementation of any one approach. This can be interpreted that the boundary lines that distinguish theoretical approaches are blurred and that SISP theory needs a new way of thinking to stay relevant for practice. In addition, many findings of significant importance to SISP practitioners, in the context of various industries, are presented.

A Hybrid Multiple Criteria Decision Making Technique for Prioritizing Equipments

Prioritization of equipment is an important factor for decision making to optimize maintenance management in Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM). Many factors must be considered as part of the prioritization of equipment for maintenance activities. Consequently, evaluation procedures involve several objectives and it is often necessary to compromise among conflicting tangible and intangible factors. Multiple Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) is a useful approach to solve these problems. In this study, a hybrid model is developed for prioritizing the equipment in hybrid flow systems. The first stage involves identifying the criteria. The second stage is prioritizing the different criteria using fuzzy Analytical Network Process (ANP), in which the weight of each criterion is calculated using modified fuzzy Logarithmic Least Square Method (LLSM) to overcome the criticism of inconsistency, unbalanced scale of judgments, uncertainty and imprecision in the pair-wise comparison process, then finally ranking of equipment using fuzzy Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS).

Fuzzy Judgments and Fuzzy Sets

Using fuzzy set theory has become attractive to many people. However, the many references cited here and in other works, little thought is given to why numbers should be made fuzzy before plunging into the necessary simulations to crank out numbers without giving reason or proof that it works to one’s advantage. In fact it does not often do that, certainly not in decision making. Regrettably, many published papers that use fuzzy set theory presumably to get better answers were not judged thoroughly by reviewers knowledgeable in both fuzzy theory and decision making. Buede and Maxwell (1995), who had done experiments on different ways of making decisions, found that fuzzy does the poorest job of obtaining the right decision as compared with other ways. “These experiments demonstrated that the MAVT (Multiattribute Value Theory) and AHP (Analytic Hierarchy Process) techniques, when provided with the same decision outcome data, very often identify the same alternatives as ‘best’. The other techniques are noticeably less consistent with the Fuzzy algorithm being the least consistent.”

Strategy as Action

In the post-crisis era, new concepts are emerging, while some old and dysfunctional ones are being discarded. Strategy is about making series of decisions that drive corporate action under specific coupling with company’s environment and context. Because decisions are actions, the strategy itself is action, not just a description of action. In the world of traditional strategy, descriptions (information) have replaced action (knowledge), and talk has replaced walk. We start from the premise that strategy is what company does, and what company does is its strategy. One cannot run a company just on descriptions and framed mission statements. The role of customers is crucial: the customer shapes strategy and triggers corporate action. Without respecting the customer, there is no viable strategy. This is why we label the action-based strategic thinking as “Anti-Porter”: consumers do not want tradeoffs and thus truly effective strategy cannot be rooted in Porter’s tradeoffs.

Thinking in Terms of Design Decisions When Developing Maturity Models

To measure dedicated aspects of “maturity”, a range of maturity models have been developed in the field of information systems by practitioners and academics over the past years. Despite its broad proliferation, the concept has not escaped criticism. Unnecessary bureaucracy, poor theoretical foundation, and the impression of a falsified certainty to achieve success are a few examples. As there is a significant lack of knowledge on how to design theoretically sound and widely accepted maturity models, in this paper, the author opens the discussion on design decisions when developing these models. Based on analogy and informed arguments, the author synthesizes a generic but adjuvant framework that consists of five common design steps and eighteen decision parameters that help practitioners as well as researchers in the development of maturity models.

Overcoming Liability of Foreignness

This study examines the liability of foreignness (LOF) faced by multinational enterprises (MNEs), and the effects of strategies employed to overcome the liability. Based on a sample of 3,085 Sino-foreign joint ventures formed in manufacturing sectors in China, the authors find that Hong Kong investors, who are often perceived to have lower LOF than investors from other countries, are more actively engaged in strategies to overcome the LOF. Specifically, Hong Kong investors actively adopt strategies to seek local markets, maintain investment flexibility, utilize their competitive advantages in labor-intensive industries, and leverage cooperative synergism to improve their performance. Investors from other countries adopt market seeking and cooperative synergy approach to improve performance.

The Traveling Salesman Problem, the Vehicle Routing Problem, and Their Impact on Combinatorial Optimization

The Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP) and the Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP) are two of the most popular problems in the field of combinatorial optimization. Due to the study of these two problems, there has been a significant growth in families of exact and heuristic algorithms being used today. The purpose of this paper is to show how their study has fostered developments of the most popular algorithms now applied to the solution of combinatorial optimization problems. These include exact algorithms, classical heuristics and metaheuristics.

Investigating Strategic Alternatives for Improving Service in an Inland Waterway Transportation System

A series of five locks form a transportation bottleneck in the upper Mississippi River navigation system. With optimizing models, statistical modeling and computer simulation, the authors explore the effects of alternative scheduling regimes and infrastructure changes to improve performance of an inland waterway transportation system. In this paper, the authors show the value of triangulating and integrating analysis with different research paradigms in order to explore the effects of alternative strategies for improving performance of a major transportation system.

Toward Understanding Ethical Decision Making

This paper proposes a step-wise methodology for the development of a scale measuring intent-to-act ethically, which is a step forward in the ethical decision-making process. To test the robustness of the methodology, data from two different populations gathered from 75 students and 181 professionals were examined to ensure reliability in ethical workplace scenarios. This research is relevant to recent issues like the current economic crisis lead by the sub-prime banking failures. The failures of Enron and Tyco are extreme examples of failure of societal members to act ethically. The construction of scale-measuring items was based on a theory of intent, and issues identified from the human resource management literature related to reasons employees do not report perceived unethical behavior in the workplace. Tested for social desirability bias, the results show that the proposed scale offers an improved reliability for assessing behavioral intent related to ethical decision-making. With these findings, this paper provides a tool for research that relies on a measure of ethical intent as a proxy for ethical behavior.