Performance-based strategic resource allocation in supply networks

One driving force behind continued logistics planning research is firms’ need to maintain competitive performance and efficient resource allocation. Operations research has been instrumental in advancing logistics planning research particularly in the petroleum industry. The impact and potential of incorporating performance imperatives however, have been largely unaddressed while the problem's general complexity has grown. This paper focuses on performance planning through resource allocation in supply networks by developing a profit-maximizing network model for distribution planning, and explicitly incorporating order performance criteria for distribution centers and delivery vehicles. The approach has been tested on forty realistic-sized problems, and tradeoff models provide insight and guidelines for assessing the interaction among expected profits, customer service, and operational efficiency for resource acquisition and redistribution. Managerial implications are also provided.     

The allocation of R&D resource

Abstract
The allocation of R&D resource in a multi-business organisation is often based more on current operating performance than on the relative potential for technological development of the businesses. The approach suggested in this paper attempts to overcome these problems by linking R&D allocation very closely to business strategy. The two key concepts are technology leverage, i.e. the extent to which technology can change the business environment in an industry to yield competitive advantage, and business leverage i.e. the current competitive strength of an individual business within an industry. Where technology leverage is weak, competitive advantage will be mainly dependent on factors other than R&D and it is suggested that levels of R&D effort at or below 1 % of turnover are appropriate. Where technology leverage is strong, R&D can be effective in maintaining strong business leverage by achieving technology mastery or in transforming a weak business position by creating a technological discontinuity. R&D intensities ranging from 3 to 15 or more % of turnover are thought to be appropriate in these cases. This framework can be used for policy debates on R&D allocation, for example whether the R&D allocation is appropriate for the business strategy or whether R&D could spearhead a more expansionist business strategy. The framework has been successfully used in ICI Chemicals and Polymers Limited during the annual R&D budget process.     

Strategy making as iterated processes of resource allocation

Capitalizing on the Bower-Burgelman process model of strategy making in a large, complex organization, we investigate the multilevel managerial activities that lead firms facing similar new business opportunities to respond with different strategic commitments. Our field-based data provide evidence on (I) the role of ‘corporate contexts’ that reflects top managers' crude strategic intent in shaping strategic initiatives of business-unit managers; (2) the critical influence of early business development results on increasing or decreasing middle managers' enthusiasm to the new businesses and top managers' confidence in these middle managers in a resource allocation; (3) the escalation or deescalation of a firm's strategic commitment to the new businesses as a consequence of iterations of resource allocation. We conclude that it is useful to conceptualize strategy making in a large, complex firm as an iterated process of resource allocation.     

The orbit-spectrum resource: Market allocation of international property

The author presents a formulation of a market system for the allocation of orbital space to geosynchronous communications satellites. Although based on a simplified model of satellite communications systems, the market system retains sufficient flexibility to be applicable to the allocation problems of the next two decades. Ultimately, the usage rights put forward in this article may need to be modified to include explicitly additional aspects of the orbital-spectrum resource. This formulation, however, includes in the definition of the usage right most of the information actually used today in picking an orbital location for a satellite.     

PPP合同风险识别和分配

公私合作（PPP）模式是国际上运用于基础设施建设的最新模式,通过公私合作的形式,越来越多的私营部门开始投资、建设、管理甚至拥有基础设施。文章通过分析PPP项目成功的关键因素,识别PPP合同可能存在的风险因素,并提出合同风险的分配方法。     

Quality measurement as a basis for resource allocation: research assessment exercises in United Kingdom universities

The research assessment exercises covering universities in the United Kingdom aim to produce quality ratings as a basis for the allocation of much of the research funding from central government. For each subject area a panel drawn from higher education and research users awards a grade to each university department. Each subject is allocated a predetermined share of the total research fund. The sum each university then receives is determined by the number of active research workers and the grades awarded.
The first research assessment exercises were carried out in 1986 and 1989. By the time of the 1992 exercise the number of universities in the United Kingdom had increased dramatically with the conferment of university status on all the former polytechnics and a small number of other institutions. This paper describes the way in which quality was assessed and the results of the 1992 exercise together with the changes made for the next exercise taking place in March 1996.
The research assessment exercises have required the new universities (principally the former polytechnics) to compete on an equal footing with the established universities for research funding and thus for their staff to engage more fully in research. The result is a major change in the environment, particularly in the new universities. This paper offers a preliminary examination of the attempts by universities to this change with the consequential effect upon the labour market.     

Resource integration: Adopting a paradox perspective to inform the management of tensions in customer resource allocation

Service-dominant logic maintains that value is created collaboratively through a process of resource integration. Knowledge-intensive business services, the context for this study, are heavily dependent on customer resources for the fulfilment of the value proposition. Value co-creation is compromised when resources are not allocated in appropriate quality or quantity. While there is a growing body of research identifying antecedents to customer resource input, few studies investigate how customers might overcome barriers to resource allocation, particularly when faced with competing demands. This article uses a paradox perspective to explore the management of tensions affecting resource allocation. Empirically, we draw on interviews with service providers to identify perceived resource deficiencies, and with customers to explore resource allocation management. We show that it is possible to manage resource allocation tensions by devising novel solutions that integrate the two opposing demands. In addition, these solutions can result in an ‘augmented’ resource, particularly if the service provider is permitted to influence customer resource deployment. Finally, these novel solutions can activate an unintended by-product or secondary resource, enhancing the relationship between provider and customer.     

Risk management in public sector research: approach and lessons learned at a national research organization

As the Canadian federal government's main research body and a public sector agency, the National Research Council (NRC) must manage numerous strategic as well as operational risks, including those at the project, program and portfolio levels. Such risks might arise from political and other stakeholder interests, intellectual property ownership and policy, funding structures, public perceptions of science and technology, occupational health and safety, management of highly qualified personnel, availability of receptor capacity for research being undertaken, and unknown markets for very new research areas, to name a few. Varying risk management practices have existed across NRC institutes and programs in the past as a result of the relative autonomy afforded to these groups. In seeking a more systematic approach, driven by both external and internal interests, NRC researched best practices, models and frameworks for risk management. NRC needed an appropriate model and approach for managing risk that could be applied throughout different levels and within the various arenas of its activities. The approach selected is based on the concept of enterprise risk management, allowing NRC to look not only at specific areas of risk but the larger picture – effectively assessing, controlling, exploiting and monitoring risks from all sources that might threaten the achievement of its goals. At the same time, such an approach also ensures that potential opportunities that could facilitate achievement of its goals are not missed. This paper shares some of NRC's findings of its research (including best practices), describes its current framework and approach, as well as some of its challenges.     

Decentralized control of cooperative and autonomous agents for solving the distributed resource allocation problem

This paper focuses on the decision-making mechanism of coordination protocol for a multi-agent system in collaborative, distributed environment requiring resource allocation solutions. The model of distributed collaboration network (DCN) for distributed resource allocation is developed. The use of monitored viability of each agent as a feedback for the agent's reflexivity and goal adjustment mechanisms during the coordination process is introduced. Question: Will (can) a multi-agent system, as a whole, achieve efficient resource allocations, when each agent makes independent decisions, adjusted by feedback of its own viability measure to maximize its own goal based on limited information about the entire system? To investigate this question, experiments were conducted by using the parallel simulator TIE/Protocol to model the DCN and multi-agent system behavior.     

Production planning and inventory allocation of a single-product assemble-to-order system with failure-prone machines

We consider the optimal production and inventory allocation of a single-product assemble-to-order system with multiple demand classes and lost sales. Each component is replenished by a dedicated machine that is subjected to unpredictable breakdowns. We find that the machine state not only influences the production and allocation decisions on its own component but also influences the decisions on the other components. Specifically, the optimal component production policy is a base-stock policy with the base-stock level non-decreasing in the inventory levels of the other components and the states of the other machines. The optimal component allocation policy is a rationing policy with the rationing level non-increasing in the inventory levels of the other components, the states of the other machines, and its own machine state. We use an exponential distribution to approximate the distribution of the total processing times and propose two heuristic policies to address the production and allocation decisions. The importance of taking machine failures into consideration is revealed through computational experiments.     

Buying in a matrix organization

A study of 32 purchase situations within a large research organization organized under a matrix form confirmed that members from both functional and project groups were participants in the buying center. Another finding was that the influence of buying center members across five stages of the purchase process remains the same. Significant differences in influence were found however, among the different functions with program representatives having a greater influence than project ones.     

Order allocation in a multiple-supplier environment

The objective of this article is to study the effects of an order allocation procedure in a supply chain. This supply chain consists of a company that can order products from multiple suppliers. At any time of an order, decisions have to be made by the company concerning the allocation of products to the suppliers and the respective order quantities, so that the total purchasing cost is minimized, while maintaining a specified service level. For this purpose, we have developed a solution algorithm and tested it to examine its effectiveness in terms of the service level and the company's total purchasing cost. The final section of the paper summarizes the conclusions of this study and suggests directions for future research.     

Food prices and the efficiency of public intervention: the case of the public distribution system in India

As public intervention is a pervasive influence on food prices, this paper asks whether and how the inefficiency of state institutions matters to food prices. In the context of the wheat subsidy scheme in India, the paper models the implications of quality differences between public and private grain supply. As both are procured at similar prices, the lower quality of public grain marks the inefficiency of government operations. The paper proposes and empirically validates a method to test for demand switches that occur as a result of quality preference. As a result, a reduction in food subsidies increases food prices and hurts the poor even when they are not major recipients of the subsidy. This seeming paradox is contingent on the inefficiency of public interventions. Thus, the outcome will be different if the reduction in food subsidy were to be accompanied by reforms in the associated state agencies.     

Decision making for business model development: a process study of effectuation and causation in new technology-based ventures

This study investigates the decision-making logics used by new ventures to develop their business models. In particular, they focussed on the logics of effectuation and causation and how their dynamics shape the development of business models over time. They found that the effectual decision-making logic was used dominantly to generate a viable value proposition for a specific customer segment. Causal logic is then used dominantly to define the other business model components in relation to the value proposition and customer segment. When a shortage of resources emerges, causal logic is replaced by an increase in effectual decision-making again. They concluded that before investing significant resources in a business model it was crucial for firms to reduce, as far as possible, technological and market uncertainty through effectual strategies to avoid high re-configuration costs later.     

Time allocation of a pooled industrial sales force

The use of the salesman's daily call report has certain limitations regarding internal budgeting matters within a pooled industrial sales force. This article focuses on a case history of using “instantaneous observations” of a salesman's time for budgeting and control purposes.     

Top manager and network effects on the adoption of innovative management practices: a study of TQM in a public hospital system

This paper reports findings from a study that combined two theoretical perspectives—top manager and network/institutional—to examine the factors influencing organizations to adopt innovative management practices. The study setting was a system of public hospitals and the innovation was Total Quality Management (TQM). Study results indicate that both top manager and network/institutional factors are important determinants of whether and when organizations adopt innovations. However, as predicted, the relative importance of these two sets of factors appears to change as an innovation becomes more widely diffused. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

地质块段法在煤炭资源储量估算中的应用

本文运用地质块段法对山西某矿的煤炭资源／储量估算进行了核查,简述了煤层储量的估算和核实方法,结合估算区的地质特征选取煤层厚度等参数,计算得出资源／储量估算结果,并对资源／储量变化情况进行评述。     

ICT-enabled system innovations in public services: Experiences from intelligent transport systems

Public transport is confronted with major challenges such as climate change and congestion. This paper discusses how these major challenges are addressed by means of ICT-enabled system innovations in public services. Recent developments in ICT enable the realisation of novel solutions for public transport that can be subsumed under the headline of intelligent transport systems (ITS). However, while the advances in information and communication technology are very fast, the transformation of transport systems and infrastructures tends to take a long time. In parallel, public sector reforms of the past decade, often characterised by the introduction of New Public Management principles, have changed the organisational and institutional conditions for transport service provision and innovation, with the private sector playing an increasingly prominent role. Public–private innovation networks in services (ServPPINs) have been suggested as a concept to foster the realisation of system innovations.This paper analyses the conditions, determinants and instruments for managing ServPPINs successfully, by comparing four cases of ServPPINs in intelligent transport systems, which all aim at establishing system innovations. The four cases are: ITS Vienna Region, a dynamic intermodal traffic information service; compano, a novel ride-sharing scheme in Austria; SIS, a real-time traffic information services, displays and management system in Oslo; and Flexus, an electronic ticket system for public transportation in Oslo.The paper shows the importance of organisational and institutional conditions of ServPPINs for realising these system innovations, and the crucial role of entrepreneurial individuals, both in public and private sector organisations. It also points to the importance of making clear strategic choices at the right moments in time in the course of the life-cycle of ServPPINs.     

Inter-location technical communication in a geographically dispersed research organization

A survey was carried out of all graduate research workers in a multi-location agricultural research organization. An analysis was conducted of all possible pairs of research workers. This paper examines the probability that a pair of individuals will communicate if they are at different locations. The probability is very low, and is substantially increased only if both are members of the same department, especially if one is head of the unit. Project bonds have a much weaker effect on communication between major locations. Close similarity in work-focus has a moderate effect.