Accounting information,salesforce compensation and acquisition of new customers

The need for the management accounting system (MAS) to support marketing decisions has been identified in literature and practice. Accordingly, several improvements have been suggested with the main intention of providing more detailed information on marketing segments. Yet, even with respect to these improved systems it has to be acknowledged that the quality of the information provided will not be identical for all marketing segments: it can be assumed that it will be more precise for existing segments, which are already served by the firm, than for new ones, with which the firm has comparatively little experience. Further, it has to be considered that the MAS will seldom be the only source of useful information, as the example of the good salesforce having gained a ‘deep understanding’ of the market while doing his job shows. A problem arises if the acquisition of this additional information is (personally) costly and unobservable and therefore has to be motivated by incentive compensation schemes. This paper emphasizes that standard compensation contracts, as recommended by literature and practice, may fail to induce goal-congruent behaviour. It is shown that ranking commission rates according to the profitabilities reported by the MAS may be dysfunctional and that a non-intuitive rank order may be necessary to motivate the salesforce to become better informed and to use this knowledge appropriately.     

Psychological testing for selection purposes: a guide to evidence-based practice for human resource professionals

In order to be effective, HR practitioners need to be informed of best practice in a wide array of activities (Pfeffer 1994; Griffeth and Hom 2001). A key activity that is crucial to firm performance is recruitment and selection, yet many practitioners are poorly informed of the latest findings. In this review, evidence on the use of psychological testing for selection purposes was examined. Specifically, the focus of this paper is evidence that can be applied to ensure that psychological tests (ability and personality tests) are used in a way that ensures their effectiveness is maximized. A review of the extant literature identified five broad issues that relate to the use of psychological tests for selection purposes. These are: (1) how constructs for a particular job should be identified for selection purposes; (2) how test scores should be reported to a manager; (3) whether test information should be previewed prior to the interview;, (4) how psychological test scores and interview data should be combined; and, (5) whether a hiring recommendation should be given by the provider of candidate psychological test scores. The evidence on each of these issues is summarized and recommendations are made for effective HRM practices.     

Limited monitoring and the essentiality of money

Monetary theory emphasizes that imperfect monitoring is necessary for money to be essential, that is, for money to achieve socially desirable allocations. Little is known about how limited monitoring must be if money is to be essential, though. Understanding sufficient conditions for the essentiality of money is important since monitoring is a natural way in which credit is introduced in monetary models. In this paper, we show that money can fail to be essential even if monitoring is quite limited. This indicates that one must be careful when introducing monitoring in monetary models to allow for the coexistence of money and credit.     

Managing functional flexibility in a passenger transport firm

In this study we focus on how a Dutch passenger transport firm managed the functional flexibility of employees when it had to become more flexible due to increased competition. Specifically, we examine the relationships between the personal characteristics of employees and their work perceptions on the one hand and their functional flexibility on the other. Our results show that functional flexibility consists of two dimensions, willingness and ability to be flexible, and that work perceptions are more closely related to the willingness, rather than the ability, to be flexible. Willingness to be flexible was positively related to need for growth, tendency for innovation, organisational support and negatively to task formalisation. Ability to be flexible was related to need for growth, tendency for innovation and general self‐efficacy. The implications for management are then discussed.     

Coupling between financing and innovation in a startup: embedded in networks with investors and researchers

Innovation may be a basis for starting a business, and financing is typically needed for starting. Innovation and financing may conceivably be negatively related, or be unrelated, or plausibly be beneficially related. These possible scenarios frame the questions: What is the coupling between innovation and financing at inception, and what is the embeddedness of coupling in networks around the entrepreneur, specifically networks with investors and researchers? These questions are addressed with a globally representative sample of entrepreneurs interviewed at inception of their business. Innovation and financing are found to be decoupled, typically; less frequently to be loosely coupled, and rarely to be tightly coupled. Coupling is promoted by networking with both investors and researchers, with additive effects and with a synergy effect. By ascertaining coupling and its embeddedness in networks as a way for building capability in a startup, the study contributes to empirically supported theorizing about capability building.

     

Statistical Implementations of Agent-Based Demographic Models

A variety of demographic statistical models exist for studying population dynamics when individuals can be tracked over time. In cases where data are missing due to imperfect detection of individuals, the associated measurement error can be accommodated under certain study designs (e.g. those that involve multiple surveys or replication). However, the interaction of the measurement error and the underlying dynamic process can complicate the implementation of statistical agent-based models (ABMs) for population demography. In a Bayesian setting, traditional computational algorithms for fitting hierarchical demographic models can be prohibitively cumbersome to construct. Thus, we discuss a variety of approaches for fitting statistical ABMs to data and demonstrate how to use multi-stage recursive Bayesian computing and statistical emulators to fit models in such a way that alleviates the need to have analytical knowledge of the ABM likelihood. Using two examples, a demographic model for survival and a compartment model for COVID-19, we illustrate statistical procedures for implementing ABMs. The approaches we describe are intuitive and accessible for practitioners and can be parallelised easily for additional computational efficiency.     

Optimal pre-dispatch task assignment of volunteers in daily emergency response

In emergency response volunteer programs, volunteers in the vicinity of an emergency are alerted via their mobile phones to the scene of the event to perform a specific task. Tasks are usually assigned based on predetermined rules disregarding real-world uncertainties. In this paper, we consider some of these uncertainties and propose an optimization model for the dispatch of volunteers to emergencies, where all task assignments must be done before dispatch. This means that each volunteer must be given a task before knowing whether (s)he is available. The model becomes computationally demanding for large problem instances; therefore, we develop a simple greedy heuristic for the problem and ensure that it can produce high quality solutions by comparing it to the exact model. While the model is for a general emergency, we test it for the case of volunteers responding to out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) incidents. We compare the results of the model to the dispatch strategies used in two ongoing volunteer programs in Sweden and in the Netherlands and use simulation to validate the results. The results show that the model most often outperforms the currently used strategies; however, the computational run times, even for the heuristic, are too high to be operationally useful for large problem instances. Thus, it should be possible to improve the outcome using optimization-based task assignments strategies, but a fast solution method is needed for such strategies to be practically useable.     

Integrated fire and ambulance siting: A deterministic model

The model presented in this paper is developed for an integrated emergency system in which ambulance and fire service deployment are simultaneously considered. The model extends and blends the Maximal Covering Location Problem (MCLP) for ambulance siting and the Facility Location-Equipment Emplacement Technique (FLEET) for fire service placement. The objective of the new formulation is to maximize and trade-off both ambulance and fire coverage subject to constraints on the total number of vehicles and stations of both types that can be sited. We introduce a new concept in integrated coverage that permits free-standing ambulance stations to be sited in addition to fire stations. Typically, ambulances are located at fire stations and, sometimes, hospitals; that is, eligible sites are driven by prior choices that did not include consideration of ambulance service. Our results, based on three sample problems, suggest that, for a given budget level for facility construction, it may be possible for ambulance coverage to be increased with little or no loss in fire coverage. This condition pertains if ambulance stations are freed of the requirement to be sited only at fire stations.     

The art of forgiveness

The art of forgiveness is a significant managerial process for dealing with intrapsychic and interpersonal injury and error in the health care environment. The ability to forgive is essential if healthy relationships are to be maintained and job productivity is to be enhanced. This article outlines who needs to be forgiven, the process of forgiveness, why forgiveness is difficult, and strategies for the manager in the art of forgiveness.     

产学研合作培养人力资源管理研究生的初步探索

我国高等教育已经迈入大众化阶段,研究生教育规模不断扩大,研究生的就业已成为令人关注的社会问题;为提高研究生的就业竞争力,研究生教育的普通教育取向模式应向职业教育取向模式转变;应建立产学研合作平台,联合教育机构、研究机构和产业机构的力量,整合三方资源优势,共同培养就业竞争力高的人力资源管理研究生。     

师范性的融入与提升：综合性大学发展教师教育的关键

随着我国经济社会和教育事业的快速发展,我国一些综合性大学纷纷发展教师教育。尽管综合性大学在发展教师教育过程中有其独特的优势,但是师范性在综合性大学教师教育中的缺失不可忽视。这些缺失主要体现在教师教育观念有待转变、课程体系有待完善、培养模式有待探索和师资水平有待提高4个方面。为此,我们要高度重视教师教育发展.,加强教师教育课程体系建设,探索教师教育培养模式及加强教师教育师资队伍建设。只有这样,师范性才能顺利融入综合性大学教师教育中和在其中得到有效提升,真正发挥综合性大学教师教育的功能。     

Securing the major gift: persistence, respect and timing

I have often said when a request has been made, "It has to be right for the donor." These two stories bear that out. A guiding principle for development officers should be: practice respect, be cognizant of timing, and keep at it ... be persistent.     

Asymptotic interpretations for equilibria of nonatomic games

We show that a mixed equilibrium of a semi-anonymous nonatomic game can be used to generate pure-strategy profiles for finite games randomly generated from the type distribution of the nonatomic game. As the numbers of players involved in the finite games increase, the generated profiles will be asymptotically equilibrium. The converse of this result is also true, i.e., a mixed-strategy profile that is not an equilibrium for the nonatomic game will not be able to achieve the above asymptotic rationality for large finite games. The combined finding can be specialized to situations where the nonatomic game is anonymous and where the given equilibrium is pure. Besides their practical values, these results offer yet one more justification for the study of nonatomic games. They also suggest that efforts may be better spent on searching for mixed rather than pure equilibria of nonatomic games.     

Behavioural Microsimulation with Labour Supply Responses

This paper provides a technical survey of recent developments in behavioural microsimulation. We discuss the criteria by which models of labour supply may be chosen for application to behavioural microsimulation, and consider how such models may be augmented to control for fixed costs, child–related work costs, preference heterogeneity and endogeneity in wages. We describe methods by which non–linear budget constraints may be accommodated in estimation, policy simulations and welfare analysis, and discuss how stochastic terms may be factored into the simulation of behavioural responses to a policy shock.     

On the Application of Markov Chain Monte Carlo Methods to Genetic Analyses on Complex Pedigrees

Markov chain Monte Carlo methods are frequently used in the analyses of genetic data on pedigrees for the estimation of probabilities and likelihoods which cannot be calculated by existing exact methods. In the case of discrete data, the underlying Markov chain may be reducible and care must be taken to ensure that reliable estimates are obtained. Potential reducibility thus has implications for the analysis of the mixed inheritance model, for example, where genetic variation is assumed to be due to one single locus of large effect and many loci each with a small effect. Similarly, reducibility arises in the detection of quantitative trait loci from incomplete discrete marker data. This paper aims to describe the estimation problem in terms of simple discrete genetic models and the single-site Gibbs sampler. Reducibility of the Gibbs sampler is discussed and some current methods for circumventing the problem outlined.     

供应链上下游企业不合作信息博弈的应急协调分析

以供应系统的突发事件为研究对象,确定制造商作为供应链中的核心企业,引进紧急系数的概念,实现突发事件下对供应品的分类管理,在此基础上以制造商获得供应商告知实情,防止劣质产品供应以及期望收益的最大化为准则,对供需双方冲突进行博弈分析,从时间、收益等多个维度刻画突发事件可能造成的危害和可挽救度,建立不同等级供应品的供应系统动态应急模型,并分多阶段对突发事件进行动态协调,促进突发事件的快速恢复。最后通过实际案例,分析供应商和制造商的期望收益,给出不同等级供应品的应急预案流程,并对流程优化以及日常运营管理提出相应的建议。     

By-Products

This paper distinguishes between by-products of the activity and those associated with changes in the demand for another jointly-produced output. It attempts to define when one or more jointly-produced outputs would be by-products of the activity and others would be produced at the margin. The conditions are explored that are necessary for one or more jointly-produced outputs to be, or behave like, by-products of the activity. These conditions are expected to help in sorting out by-products from marginally produced outputs in the preparation of cost structures for analytic work.     

Implementing road-use pricing by stealth

The recent White Paper indicates the start of serious attention to the use of road-use pricing, while the hard edge of the argument is to be found in the Treasury's Comprehensive Spending Review. What has yet to be examined is the problem of equipping the nation's vehicles with the necessary devices, effective for the purpose over the whole country. This could be done by replacing the paper 'tax disc' with a standardised electronic tag - carrying stored credit-units - which could provide for road-use payments as and where they come to be introduced.     

The demand for and supply of assurance

Consumers want products and services that are safe and of good quality. Corresponding to such demand is the demand for assurance , before the fact, that the quality and safety will be as promised. his demand for assurance creates opportunities for entrepreneurs to profit by providing assurance - and they do so in a wide and largely unappreciated variety of ways. The essential dialectic of the free enterprise system does apply to assurance. Governments'quality and safety restrictions on the freedom of contract, known to be so costly, are, therefore, unredeemed and should be repealed.     

Sample selection bias with multiple selection rules: An application to student aid grants

This paper extends the sample selection bias correction procedure, developed by James J. Heckman, to the case of multiple selection rules. Estimators are presented for independent selection rules and a consistent estimator for the variance-covariance matrix is derived. The methodology is applied to the problem of estimating the financial aid available to U.S. highschool students for college education. In order to be observed in receipt of financial aid, a student has to be both enrolled in college and to have had an expected value of aid in excess of the costs of applying. Both of these sources of selection bias were found to be important.