Melbourne's Public Transport Franchising: Lessons for PPPs

This article reviews the recent experience of franchising Melbourne's metropolitan public transport services. The practicalities of designing and operating an effective public transport system require consideration of both strategic goals and tactical, or system-wide, integrity. Operational decisions, which include decisions about whether competitive franchising is the best means to achieve the strategic goals, should come last. In Melbourne, the operational desire for competitive franchises apparently over-rode consideration of the stated goals. Today, the franchised services have effectively failed and all services have been refranchised. An important lesson from the experience is that longer-term systemic thinking is essential for determination of the most appropriate operational transport arrangements.     

A management control system to support corporate sustainability strategies

This paper outlines a management accounting system, based upon cost variance analysis, which supports the pursuit of environmental and traditional financial goals within a decentralized organization. The framework decomposes inefficiencies into two parts. The first consists of what might be considered a natural outcome of pursuing the traditional economic goal of efficiency through cost-minimization, a “waste” variance. The second part consists of sustainability gains that produce societal benefit but may be incongruent with short-term economic goals, a “sustainability” variance. While elimination of waste variances can be encouraged using a traditional performance evaluation and reward structure, elimination of sustainability variances requires re-design of performance evaluation tools and reward structures. We demonstrate that differing production functions across operational units within organizations can impact the relative magnitude of the two variances. The failure to recognize and incorporate these differences can lead to inefficient allocation of resources and/or only partial fulfillment of the strategic environmental goals of the organization.     

珠三角:IBM全球整合战略要地

IBM在珠三角的布局,已经从单纯的业务分公司增加到了包括采购、生产、客户订单履行、软件业务支持及全球服务执行中心等在内的多个业务机构,珠三角已成为IBM全球整合的战略要地。     

Strategic Responses to Changing Climate Change Policies: The Role Played by Carbon Accounting

Using a broad institutional theory lens, this paper examines the climate change strategies and carbon accounting practices adopted by two New Zealand electricity firms in response to changes in government climate change policies over time (2002–12). The two firms pursue different strategic responses to climate change‐related institutional and economic pressures in order to maintain both legitimacy and a competitive advantage. Five different strategic responses are identified: avoidance, operational conformance, strategic conformance, strategic differentiation, negotiation and manipulation. Firm‐level characteristics are also important drivers of inter‐firm variations in the strategic responses. Further, carbon accounting makes the greatest contribution to carbon reduction when integrated as part of strategic processes that support strategic conformance and strategic differentiation. Carbon monitoring systems, internal carbon information use and carbon disclosure were the main forms of carbon accounting used to realise the different strategies employed.     

Improving workplace productivity--it isn't just about reducing absence

Employers must get more aggressive in their health and productivity strategies. A comprehensive strategy includes data analytics across health and lost-time programs, absence policies that meet today's needs for both employer and employee, health and wellness programs targeting modifiable health behaviors, and absence program administration that is aligned to operational goals. This article targets key aspects of a comprehensive long-term health and productivity strategic vision. An organization can use these aspects independently to address immediate tactical issues while it develops its broader strategy. The target areas include a view from the perspective of data management, absence program design and management, employee health and wellness, and behavioral health.     

Stochastic regularization for the mean-variance allocation scheme

Despite being based on sound principles, the original Markovitz portfolio allocation theory cannot produce sound allocations, and restrictions or modifications need to be imposed from outside the theory in order to obtain meaningful portfolios. This is unsatisfactory, and the reasons for this failure are discussed, in particular, the unavoidable small eigenvalues of the covariance. Within the original principles of risk minimization and return maximization, several modifications of the original theory are introduced. First, the strategic and tactical time horizons are separated. A base long-term allocation is chosen at the strategic time horizon, while the portfolio is optimized at the tactical time horizon using information from the price histories. Second, the tactical portfolio is financed by the strategic one, and a funding operator is introduced. The corresponding optimal allocation (without constraints) has one free parameter fixing the leverage. Third, the transaction costs are taken into account. This includes the current re-allocation cost, but crucially the expected costs of the next reallocation. This last term depends on the sensitivity of the allocation with respect to the covariance, and the expectation introduces another dependency on the (inverse) covariance. The new term regularizes the original minimization problem by modifying the lower part of the spectrum of the covariance, leading to meaningful portfolios. Without constraints, the final Lagrangian can be minimized analytically, with a solution that has a structure similar to the original Markovitz solution, but with the inverse covariance regularized by the expected transaction costs.     

Antecedents and Consequences of Eco‐Control Deployment: Evidence from Canadian Manufacturing Firms

Environmental issues have become an important consideration for a growing number of organizations. Eco‐control may represent a valuable tool to help organizations address such issues. The aim of this study is to provide an overview of the eco‐control practices adopted by Canadian organizations and to understand the antecedents and consequences of their adoption. More specifically, this study examines (i) the extent to which eco‐control practices are deployed within organizations, (ii) the factors and motivations that lead organizations to implement eco‐control practices, and (iii) the impact of adoption on firms’ managerial and operational environmental actions as well as on environmental and economic performance. Using survey data from a sample of 249 Canadian manufacturing firms, this article shows that environmental missions, environmental policies, environmental strategic planning, environmental budgets and environmental performance indicators are the most frequently adopted eco‐control practices among the investigated firms, while environmental incentives seem to be less frequently adopted. The results of this study also suggest that competitive and ethical motivations as well as size, environmental exposure and stakeholder pressure are all important factors in explaining eco‐control practice adoption by Canadian manufacturing firms. Moreover, the results of this study show that organizations that have undertaken more intensive managerial and operational environmental actions have also adopted more intensive eco‐control practices. Organizations adopting more intensive eco‐control practices perform better both environmentally and economically performance than firms adopting less intensive eco‐control practices.     

Product Costing and Inventory Accounting: A New Approach to an Old Problem

Traditional methods of accounting—including full-absorption accounting, labor and cost standards, overhead allocations, and variance analysis–can stand in the way of attempts by managers and others to improve their company's overall performance and the ability to compete globally. Many companies have recognized the need to shift the role of accounting toward higher-value, more strategic tasks, such as financial and operational analysis, tactical decision support, and even process improvement and reengineering. But the accounting tools at their disposal often prove inadequate. In fact, there is a core conflict between the need to provide accurate and consistent financial reports for external consumption–reports that comply in all respects with GAAP, Sarbanes-Oxley, SEC requirements, and the like–and the need for value-relevant and informative reports for internal management purposes.
The author proposes using multiple sets of financial reports, all deriving from a single, common database, to meet external reporting requirements while addressing the distortions and limitations of GAAP for internal purposes. In particular, he has developed a new approach called Value Added Accounting that eliminates the distortions of full-absorption accounting but that uses GAAP financial statements as its starting point. The article describes the key adjustments, presents a case study, and discusses how VAA aligns with Lean Manufacturing, Quick Response Manufacturing, Just-In-Time, and other common process improvement initiatives.     

Managing the performance of arts organisations: Pursuing heterogeneous objectives in an era of austerity

This study provides insight into how two national arts organisations located in London manage their performance in the pursuit of heterogeneous objectives, within the confines of external influences. These organisations significantly rely on the government for funding and are therefore required to implement policy initiatives, albeit at arm's length from the government. Performance management systems (PMSs) were primarily designed to enable trustees to discharge their statutory duties of collecting, preserving, and displaying objects and works of arts, which were reflected in a management agreement containing the government's strategic priorities. The findings show that the changing politico-economic climate has subtly started to change values, accountability relationships and realities in the field of arts and culture. Whilst arts organisations emphasised socio-cultural objectives in strategic planning and operational processes, external pressures arising from austerity have subtly started to displace socio-cultural values. Business language, vocabularies, and tools commonly used in the private sector are insidiously taking root in arts organisations. Austerity provided a signal to executives that the survival of their core activities was at stake, and they have to engage in income generating activities to support their core activities.     

Getting offshoring right

The prospect of offshoring and outsourcing business processes has captured the imagination of CEOs everywhere. In the past five years, a rising number of companies in North America and Europe have experimented with this strategy, hoping to reduce costs and gain strategic advantage. But many businesses have had mixed results. According to several studies, half the organizations that have shifted processes offshore have failed to generate the expected financial benefits. What's more, many of them have faced employee resistance and consumer dissatisfaction. Clearly, companies have to rethink how they formulate their offshoring strategies. A three-part methodology can help. First, companies need to prioritize their processes, ranking each based on two criteria: the value it creates for customers and the degree to which the company can capture some of that value. Companies will want to keep their core (highest-priority) processes in-house and consider outsourcing their commodity (low-priority) processes; critical (moderate-priority) processes are up for debate and must be considered carefully. Second, businesses should analyze all the risks that accompany offshoring and look systematically at their critical and commodity processes in terms of operational risk (the risk that processes won't operate smoothly after being offshored) and structural risk (the risk that relationships with service providers may not work as expected). Finally, companies should determine possible locations for their offshore efforts, as well as the organizational forms--such as captive centers and joint ventures--that those efforts might take. They can do so by examining each process's operational and structural risks side by side. This article outlines the tools that will help companies choose the right processes to offshore. It also describes a new organizational structure called the extended organization, in which companies specify the quality of services they want and work alongside providers to get that quality.     

Implementing Lean Six Sigma in healthcare: issues from Italy

Lean Six Sigma is a method for strategic process improvement that aims to improve operational uniformity and quality, and reduce variations and waste. Lean thinking and Six Sigma have traditionally been applied to manufacturing. This paper examines ways of using Lean Six Sigma in healthcare organizations. The authors discuss the implications of their research for practitioners (managers and physicians) and present an agenda for future research.     

How to implement a new strategy without disrupting your organization

Throughout most of modern busi ness history, corporations have attempted to unlock value by matching their structures to their strategies: Centralization by function. Decentralization by product category or geographic region. Matrix organizations that attempt both at once. Virtual organizations. Networked organizations. Velcro organizations. But none of these approaches has worked very well. Restructuring churn is expensive, and new structures often create new organizational problems that are as troublesome as the ones they try to solve. It takes time for employees to adapt to them, they create legacy systems that refuse to die, and a great deal of tacit knowledge gets lost in the process. Given the costs and difficulties involved in finding structural ways to unlock value, it's fair to raise the question: Is structural change the right tool for the job? The answer is usually no, Kaplan and Norton contend. It's far less disruptive to choose an organizational design that works without major conflicts and then design a customized strategic system to align that structure to the strategy. A management system based on the balanced scorecard framework is the best way to align strategy and structure, the authors suggest. Managers can use the tools of the framework to drive their unit's performance: strategy maps to define and communicate the company's value proposition and the scorecard to implement and monitor the strategy. In this article, the originators of the balanced scorecard describe how two hugely different organizations--DuPont and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police-used corporate scorecards and strategy maps organized around strategic themes to realize the enormous value that their portfolios of assets, people, and skills represented. As a result, they did not have to endure a painful series of changes that simply replaced one rigid structure with another.     

Understanding Basel II Operational and Strategic Implications

In 2004/05 McKinsey and Company conducted a major international research project to understand the operational and strategic implications of Basel II for credit institutions and capital markets. In this paper, which is a condensed summary of the findings of this effort, Krall foresees a number of interacting developments influencing banks operational and strategic choices as well as the overall level of systemic risk in the global credit markets.     

Does Operational and Financial Hedging Reduce Exposure? Evidence from the U.S. Airline Industry

We examine the effects of both financial and operational hedging on jet fuel exposure in the U.S. airline industry. Specifically, we investigate two operational hedging strategies: the extent to which airlines operate different aircraft types and the degree to which airlines operate fuel‐efficient fleets. We find that both financial and operational hedging are important tools in reducing airline exposure to jet fuel price risk. However, operational hedging strategies appear to be more economically important, which suggests that hedging with derivatives is more likely to be used to “fine‐tune” risk exposure, whereas operational choices have a higher order effect on risk exposure.     

Re-scaling risk governance using local appraisal and community involvement

This paper describes a risk governance model applied on a local scale, showing the advantages and constraints found during its application. The risk governance model, built on a municipal scale, results from the application of the International Risk Governance Council framework. The model is characterised by the cyclicity between the assessment and management spheres, assuming communication to be essential in all stages. Its application in central Portugal is rooted in a specific knowledge of hazards and their impacts, the human and financial constraints, and the expectations of citizens and stakeholders. The results show that preformatted management solutions derived from national civil protection stakeholders can be adapted to a local physical, social and institutional context. It was found that this depends significantly on the stakeholders’ concerns assessment, as this allows the subsequent risk management options to be adapted and legitimised. As a result, more appropriate land-use regulations and mitigation strategies are being designed, which are related to urban planning, road design, risk sensitisation and communication tools. However, two features are likely to lead to an overlapping of competences and conflicts concerning responsibility for decision-making in the actual civil protection structure: the current constraints on resources on an operational level and the potentially inadequate representation of stakeholders on a strategic level.     

Integrative strategic performance measurement systems,strategic alignment of manufacturing,learning and strategic outcomes: an exploratory study

There is considerable interest in the role of strategic performance measurement systems (SPMS), such as balanced scorecards, in assisting managers develop competitive strategies. A distinctive feature of SPMS is that they are designed to present managers with financial and non-financial measures covering different perspectives which, in combination, provide a way of translating strategy into a coherent set of performance measures. There appears to be wide variation in how these systems are configured. However, as yet, there has been little consideration given to identifying underlying information characteristics that might help explain how the systems have beneficial effects. This study identifies a key dimension of SPMS, integrative information, as being instrumental in assisting managers deliver positive strategic outcomes. Three interrelated dimensions of integrative SPMS were identified in this study. The first, strategic and operational linkages, was a generic factor that captures the overall extent to which the systems provide for integration between strategy and operations, and integration across elements of the value chain. The second attribute, customer orientation, focuses on customer linkages and includes financial and customer measures. The third dimension, supplier orientation, is based on linkages to suppliers and includes business process and innovation measures. A model is developed that predicts that integrative SPMS will enhance the strategic competitiveness of organizations. It is proposed that the influence of integrative SPMS on strategic outcomes is indirect through the mediating roles of alignment of manufacturing with strategy and organizational learning. Data from a survey of 80 strategic business units provide varying support for the proposed relationships.     

A practical guide to social networks

Saying that networks are important is stating the obvious. But harnessing the power of these seemingly invisible groups to achieve organizational goals is an elusive undertaking. Most efforts to promote collaboration are haphazard and built on the implicit philosophy that more connectivity is better. In truth, networks create relational demands that sap people's time and energy and can bog down entire organizations. It's crucial for executives to learn how to promote connectivity only where it benefits an organization or individual and to decrease unnecessary connections. In this article, the authors introduce three types of social networks, each of which delivers unique value. The customized response network excels at framing the ambiguous problems involved in innovation. Strategy consulting firms and new-product development groups rely on this format. By contrast, surgical teams and law firms rely mostly on the modular response network, which works best when components of the problem are known but the sequence of those components in the solution is unknown. And the routine response network is best suited for organizations like call centers, where the problems and solutions are fairly predictable but collaboration is still needed. Executives shouldn't simply hope that collaboration will spontaneously occur in the right places atthe right times in their organization. They need to develop a strategic, nuanced view of collaboration, and they must take steps to ensure that their companies support the types of social networks that best fit their goals. Drawing on examples from Novartis, the FAA, and Sallie Mae, the authors offer managers the tools they need to determine which network will deliver the best results for their organizations and which strategic investments will nurture the right degree of connectivity.     

Asset allocation and investment horizon

Quarterly recommendations by national brokerage firms since the third quarter of 1989 provide an opportunity to compare different approaches to asset allocation. To follow a brokerage firm's recommendation every quarter is to practice tactical asset allocation. Both the length of the investor's decision horizon and brokerage commissions that are incurred when portfolio changes are made impact investment performance, and both contribute to the risk experienced by investors. Buy-and-hold and strategic asset allocation would have served investors better than tactical asset allocation during the first half of the 1990s.     

Directing strategically financial management education and training

Competence, capability and capacity in financial management are crucial for the success of all commercial organizations. Financial literacy is required of most if not all of the significant decision makers within organizations, no matter what their official status might be, if those organizations are to function effectively. Traditionally, developing this literacy has been seen as just another training issue on the agenda for the company's training department. This paper will argue that financial literacy is so important to organizations that financial management education and training should be seen more as part of the financial management control system of the organization than as a self development issue.

Directors of finance need to become involved in the financial education and training process, particularly at a strategic level, so as to ensure that the company's competence, capability and capacity in financial management are appropriate to the pace and direction of company development.     

Realizing the Potential of Real Options: Does Theory Meet Practice?

The idea of viewing corporate investment opportunities as “real options” has been around for over 25 years. Real options concepts and techniques now routinely appear in academic research in finance and economics, and have begun to influence scholarly work in virtually every business discipline, including strategy, organizations, management science, operations management, information systems, accounting, and marketing. Real options concepts have also made considerable headway in practice. Corporate managers are more likely to recognize options in their strategic planning process, and have become more proactive in designing flexibility into projects and contracts, frequently using real options vocabulary in their discussions. Thanks in part to the spread of real options thinking, today's strategic planners are more likely than their predecessors to recognize the “option” value of actions like the following: ? dividing up large projects into a number of stages; ? investing in the acquisition or production of information; ? introducing “modularity” in manufacturing and design; ? developing competing prototypes for new products; and ? investing in overseas markets. But if real options has clearly succeeded as a way of thinking, the application of real options valuation methods has been limited to companies in relatively few industries and has thus failed to live up to expectations created in the mid‐ to late‐1990s. Increased corporate acceptance and implementations of real options valuation techniques will require several changes coming together. On the theory side, we need more realistic models that better reflect differences between financial and real options, simple heuristic methods that can be more easily implemented (but that have been carefully benchmarked against more precise models), and better guidance on implementation issues such as the estimation of discount rates for the “optionless” underlying projects. On the practitioner side, we need user‐friendly real options software, more senior‐level buy‐in, more deliberate diffusion of real options knowledge throughout organizations, better alignment of managerial incentives with long‐term shareholder value, and better‐designed contracts to correct the misalignment of incentives across the value chain. If these challenges can be met, there will continue to be a steady if gradual diffusion of real options analysis throughout organizations over the next few decades, with real options eventually becoming not only a standard part of corporate strategic planning, but also the primary valuation tool for assessing the expected shareholder effect of large capital investment projects.