Supply Chain Game Changers—Mega,Nano, and Virtual Trends—And Forces That Impede Supply Chain Design (i.e., Building a Winning Team)

Strategic systems design is essential to structuring and governing a supply chain for competitive advantage. To effectively co‐create value, decision makers must manage the three rights of supply chain design: right players, right roles, and right relationships. Doing this well requires managers discern how the unwritten competitive rules are changing as well as determine firm readiness to compete. As part of this analysis, we briefly explore five emerging “game changers” that represent potential supply chain design inflection points: (1) Big Data and predictive analytics, (2) additive manufacturing, (3) autonomous vehicles, (4) materials science, and (5) borderless supply chains. We also consider four forces that impede transformation to higher levels of value co‐creation: (1) supply chain security, (2) failed change management, (3) lack of trust as a governance mechanism, and (4) poor understanding of the “luxury” nature of corporate social responsibility initiatives. How well managers address sociostructural and sociotechnical issues will determine firm survivability and success.     

Identity in the “Road Racing Capital of the World”: heritage,geography and contested spaces

This article explores the complex relationship between sport and landscape and their role in the expression and maintenance of identity. While discussions have typically emphasised the role taken by stadia and sporting venues in the development and expression of sporting and national identities, fewer have considered the role taken by the wider landscape. It is this landscape that provides the context in which many sports are enacted and watched and it is through the embodied actions and experiences that landscape is given added meaning, reinforcing narratives of space that are implicated in the creation and maintenance of national identities. Yet here, unlike stadia or other sporting venues, space is much less regulated; as a result, participants and observers are also implicated in the creation of “counter geographies” that destabilise “official” narratives of space. Here our focus is on the contested landscapes of the Isle of Man Tourist Trophy Races; an event where sporting narratives have become materially and conceptually part of the landscape. Through a discussion of these landscapes and their expression in the Staying the Course exhibition curated by Manx National Heritage, we contend that geographies of sport must also reflect on the contested nature of sporting spaces.     

Sweating the Assets: Asset Leanness and Financial Performance in the Motor Carrier Industry

Originally adopted by the automotive manufacturers, lean management practices have since been applied to many other manufacturing industries. This study reviews the different theoretical perspectives on the leanness‐performance relationship in the context of the motor carriage industry. Drawing on both the lean management in logistics and organizational slack literatures, we develop hypotheses addressing the link between asset leanness and financial performance. These hypotheses are empirically tested using a comprehensive panel data set of 1,172 firm‐quarter observations from the U.S. publicly traded truckload motor carriers. Initially expecting an inverted U‐shaped relationship between asset leanness and performance, findings indicated a U‐shaped relationship, both for carriers' total assets and the subset of trailer assets.     

Do liberal cities limit new housing development? Evidence from California

Traditional explanations for why some communities block new housing construction focus on incumbent home owner incentives to block entry. Local resident political ideology may also influence community permitting decisions. This paper uses city level panel data across California metropolitan areas from 2000 to 2008 to document that liberal cities grant fewer new housing permits than observationally similar cities located within the same metropolitan area. Cities experiencing a growth in their liberal voter share have a lower new housing permit growth rate.     

The role of liquid government bonds in the great transformation of American monetary policy

A fundamental shift in monetary policy occurred around 1980: the Fed went from a “passive” policy to an “active” policy. We study a model in which government bonds provide transactions services. We present two calibrations of our model, using pre- and post-1980 data. We show that estimates of pre- and post-1980 policy rules all lie within our determinacy regions. But, the pre-1980 policy was a very bad monetary policy, even if it avoided sunspot equilibria. Model simulations suggest that household welfare would have increased by 3.3 percent of permanent consumption in this period under an active policy.     

Improving the efficiency of metropolitan area transit by joint analysis of its multiple providers

Public transportation in a metropolitan area often is supplied by multiple types of transit. This paper develops and illustrates a DEA-based procedure for estimating: overall efficiency of an area’s public transportation; technical efficiencies of the individual transit types; effect of each type on overall efficiency; and efficiency of the allocation of resources among types and an algorithm for improving it. The paper concludes that the overall efficiency of an urban area’s public transportation can be validly estimated only if the technical efficiency of each major transport type and the efficiency in allocating resources among them are taken into consideration.     

Leading Change and Innovation Through “Organizational Laundering”

Change in organizations can be frequent, but change is not always necessary. In pursuit of innovation, and at times their own agenda, leaders who exhibit a pseudotransformational leadership style can have a catastrophic effect on the workplace. Promoting change under the guise of innovation benefits self and not the organization and sponsors a workplace in turmoil. These leaders practice organizational laundering, which is proposed as an introductory term resulting from employing a combination of destructive and pseudotransformational leadership styles in an attempt to be innovative and make organizational change.