THE EFFECTS OF LOGISTICS CAPABILITIES ON FIRM PERFORMANCE: CUSTOMER‐FOCUSED VERSUS INFORMATION‐FOCUSED CAPABILITIES

The research presents a model that portrays customer‐focused and information‐focused capabilities as interrelated predictors of firm performance. Results show that customer‐focused capabilities are directly related to performance, but that information‐focused capabilities are not. Rather, the latter relationship is indirect: information‐focused capabilities are linked to performance via the interrelationship with customer‐focused capabilities.     

THE IMPACT OF POINT‐OF‐SALE DATA INACCURACY AND INVENTORY RECORD DATA ERRORS

The presence or absence of error in point‐of‐sale (POS) data and inventory system records directly affects retailer performance. This study identifies various error sources in retail supply chains and studies the influence of inventory and POS (demand) errors in a simulated retail outlet according to fill rate and average inventory. Other things being equal, we find that inventory record error reduces fill rate more than demand error. This study adds further evidence to other studies that suggest the costs caused by errors in POS systems may be overstated.     

A STEP TOWARD DEFINING A CUSTOMER‐CENTRIC TAXONOMY FOR MANAGING LOGISTICS PERSONNEL

To retain competitive viability, some progressive warehouses and distribution centers are expanding services and adopting a customer orientation. Through cluster and ANOVA analyses, three distinct classifications of frontline logistics managers are disclosed and compared with respect to their perceived levels of internal customer orientation toward their subordinates, common performance indicators, and other demographic and organizational‐type variables. Important differences exist among the groups; however, logistics managers in all three clusters score relatively well in most areas explored.     

INDIVIDUAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS ON SUPPLY CHAIN INVENTORY MANAGEMENT: AN EXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATION OF INFORMATION AVAILABILITY AND PROCEDURAL RATIONALITY

Some strategies for mitigating ordering inefficiencies in supply chains advise sharing information among decision‐makers. However, there has been little consideration of how individual perceptions intervene in the use of available information in decision‐making processes. This article reports the results of an experiment in which participants were instructed to minimize inventory holding and backlog costs for their supply chains as a whole. The analysis suggests that additional information affects supply chain inventory management costs only when rational decision‐making processes are followed. Decreased costs are observed when rational decision‐making is applied with backlog information. In contrast, increased costs are observed when consumer demand information is available.     

VENDOR‐OWNED INVENTORY MANAGEMENT ARRANGEMENTS IN RETAIL: AN AGENCY THEORY PERSPECTIVE

This paper undertakes two related tasks to augment current understanding regarding vendor‐owned inventory management (VOIM) arrangements implemented in the retail industry. The first task formally juxtaposes three prevalent forms of VOIM arrangements (i.e., Consignment, Pay‐On‐Scan, and Scan‐Based Trading) to one another and identifies three dimensions (i.e., Relevant Data Visibility, Timeliness of Information Release, and Shrink Responsibility) that serve to discriminate among them. The second task applies an Agency Theory lens to uncover differing profiles of characteristics underlying the retailer‐vendor relationship across the Consignment, Pay‐On‐Scan, and Scan‐Based Trading arrangements. These conceptual results contribute to and have implications for the science and practice of VOIM arrangements in the retail industry.     

AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE EFFECT OF FULL‐SCALE SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE ADOPTIONS ON INVENTORY BALANCES AND TURNS

Supply chain management (SCM) software vendors, analysts, and others claim that firms implementing SCM software stand to benefit by being able to reduce inventory holdings and increase inventory turns. We theorize that full‐scale implementations lead to system‐wide inventory optimization, which in turn leads to cost improvement associated with inventory balances and turns. To examine the question, we develop an analytical model of inventory optimization, then analyze the effects of the model with a numerical experiment, and finally confirm the results with an empirical examination. We find that firm‐wide implementation is significant in explaining improvement in inventory metrics, relative to pre‐implementation metrics for our sample. Our empirical tests indicate that implementing SCM software across only a portion of the firm does not impact inventory metrics, but that the scale of implementation does. More precisely, we find that firms implementing SCM software across the entire company significantly improve both inventory turns and inventory as a percent of revenue relative to partially‐implementing firms and non‐implementers.     

OPTIMAL MULTI‐AGENT PERFORMANCE MEASURES FOR TEAM CONTRACTS

We present a continuous‐time contracting model under moral hazard with many agents. The principal contracts many agents as a team, and they jointly produce correlated outcomes. We show the optimal contract for each agent is linear in outcomes of all other agents as well as his/her own. The structure of the optimal contract strikingly reveals that the optimal aggregate performance measure in general can be orthogonally decomposed into two statistics: one is a sufficient statistic, and the other a nonsufficient statistic. As a consequence, the optimal aggregate performance measure in general is not a sufficient statistic, unless the principal is risk neutral. We further discuss agents' optimal effort choices using a “quadratic‐cost” example, which also strikingly suggests that team contracts sometimes provide lower‐powered effort incentives than individually separate contracts do.     

MULTIVARIATE RISK MEASURES: A CONSTRUCTIVE APPROACH BASED ON SELECTIONS

Since risky positions in multivariate portfolios can be offset by various choices of capital requirements that depend on the exchange rules and related transaction costs, it is natural to assume that the risk measures of random vectors are set‐valued. Furthermore, it is reasonable to include the exchange rules in the argument of the risk measure and so consider risk measures of set‐valued portfolios. This situation includes the classical Kabanov's transaction costs model, where the set‐valued portfolio is given by the sum of a random vector and an exchange cone, but also a number of further cases of additional liquidity constraints. We suggest a definition of the risk measure based on calling a set‐valued portfolio acceptable if it possesses a selection with all individually acceptable marginals. The obtained selection risk measure is coherent (or convex), law invariant, and has values being upper convex closed sets. We describe the dual representation of the selection risk measure and suggest efficient ways of approximating it from below and from above. In the case of Kabanov's exchange cone model, it is shown how the selection risk measure relates to the set‐valued risk measures considered by Kulikov (2008, Theory Probab. Appl. 52, 614–635), Hamel and Heyde (2010, SIAM J. Financ. Math. 1, 66–95), and Hamel, Heyde, and Rudloff (2013, Math. Financ. Econ. 5, 1–28).     

MEASURES OF PRODUCTION PRICE‐LABOUR VALUE DEVIATION AND INCOME DISTRIBUTION IN ACTUAL ECONOMIES: A NOTE

Many empirical studies indicate that the deviations of actual prices of production from labour values are not too sensitive to the type of measure used for their evaluation. This paper attempts to theorize this rather ‘stylized fact’ by focusing on the relationships between the traditional and the numéraire‐free measures of deviation. On the empirical side, it provides an illustration of these relationships using input–output data from the Japanese economy.     

OPTIMIZATION‐BASED PROCUREMENT FOR TRANSPORTATION SERVICES

This paper presents the concept of optimization‐based procurement for transportation services. The approach allows both the shipper and carriers to benefit through the use of a collaborative approach to securing and managing a strategic relationship. Because the shipper's assignment problem involves a combinatorial number of choices and cannot be easily executed manually, the procurement process benefits strongly from the use of optimization. The authors introduce the optimization‐based procurement process, briefly analyze the theoretical issues, and discuss lessons learned from its application in practice over the last several years.     

COMONOTONIC MEASURES OF MULTIVARIATE RISKS

We propose a multivariate extension of a well‐known characterization by S. Kusuoka of regular and coherent risk measures as maximal correlation functionals. This involves an extension of the notion of comonotonicity to random vectors through generalized quantile functions. Moreover, we propose to replace the current law invariance, subadditivity, and comonotonicity axioms by an equivalent property we call strong coherence and that we argue has more natural economic interpretation. Finally, we reformulate the computation of regular and coherent risk measures as an optimal transportation problem, for which we provide an algorithm and implementation.     

EVOLVING A THEORY OF PERFORMANCE‐BASED LOGISTICS USING INSIGHTS FROM SERVICE DOMINANT LOGIC

Performance‐based logistics (PBL) represents a strategy for sustaining complex systems following production. Despite several implementations, limited understanding exists regarding PBL and its implications. Research using grounded theory emerged a theoretical framework for PBL. Service dominant logic (SDL) is introduced as a theoretical lens for interpreting the results and understanding how trading partners achieve performance‐based outcomes.     

紧急与例外--WTO成员对保障措施的运用和我国的对策

保障措施与反倾销、反补贴共同构成WTO规则所允许的贸易救济措施.通常认为,反倾销措施和反补贴措施针对的是倾销和补贴等不公平的贸易行为,而保障措施则不考虑是否存在不公平的贸易情形.因此,保障措施的本质是在紧急情况下的进口限制,是WTO成员在一定条件下免除WTO义务的例外规则之一,由此被称为进口国经济上的一个"安全阀".正是鉴于紧急和例外的特性,WTO成员对保障措施的运用通常给予了高度的重视,主要贸易大国都将其视为重要的具有广泛影响的贸易救济工具.     

THE IMPACT OF CUSTOMER RESPONSE ON INVENTORY AND UTILIZATION POLICIES

Drawing on extensive fieldwork at a semiconductor manufacturer, this research provides a framework for understanding how customer response and long production delays interact, leading to increased demand amplification across a company's supply chain. Investigating the impact resulting from the higher demand amplification, suggestions are derived for the company's capacity utilization and inventory policies     

THE SUCCESSFUL CROSS‐DOCK BASED SUPPLY CHAIN

A supply chain using the cross‐dock approach can speed goods from upstream suppliers to downstream customers quickly and cost‐effectively, with benefits to the entire chain, if the appropriate type of cross‐dock is chosen and then designed, staffed and managed for effective performance. Unlike a warehouse, which offers storage, a cross‐dock is a high performance rapid transit point that does not provide storage. Although cross‐docks have been studied with some thoroughness, what has not been seen clearly is that a cross‐dock does not operate in isolation and therefore can't be optimized independently from the upstream and downstream processes. To be successful, cross‐dock optimization makes demands for high performance on all members of the supply chain in terms of speed, effective planning, high reliability, near error‐proof processes and a high degree of transparency, visibility and information‐sharing; accordingly, the article refers to this integrative perspective as a “cross‐dock based supply chain.” To make clear this interdependency between the cross‐dock and the chain based on it, a new definition that classifies types of cross‐dock based supply chains is offered. To assist scholars analyzing and industry management choosing a cross‐dock approach, cross‐dock based supply chains are classified as falling into three different types. Lastly, based on field work in industry and on literature review, nine critical success factors for cross‐dock based supply chain operations are offered.     

ONE-PARAMETER FAMILIES OF DISTORTION RISK MEASURES

This paper introduces parametric families of distortion risk measures, investigates their properties, and discusses their use in risk management. Their derivation is based on Kusuoka's representation theorem of law invariant and comonotonically additive coherent risk measures. Our approach is to narrow down a tractable class of risk measures by requiring their comparability with the traditional expected shortfall. We make numerical comparison among them and propose a method of estimating the value of the distortion risk measures based on data. Their use and interpretation in risk management will also be discussed.     

WEB‐BASED AND MAIL SURVEYS: A COMPARISON OF RESPONSE,DATA, AND COST

The mail survey is the most common data collection technique used by logistics researchers today. Many researchers have noted that response rates to mail surveys have been declining. The Internet offers logistics researchers several potential advantages over traditional mail surveys. This research compares these two methods across response rates, speed of response, consistency of results, and cost. The research also provides unique insight regarding the ability of electronic methods to gain interest and subsequent participation among potential respondents thereby helping in theory testing.     

CVaR HEDGING USING QUANTIZATION‐BASED STOCHASTIC APPROXIMATION ALGORITHM

In this paper, we investigate a method based on risk minimization to hedge observable but nontradable source of risk on financial or energy markets. The optimal portfolio strategy is obtained by minimizing dynamically the conditional value‐at‐risk (CVaR) using three main tools: a stochastic approximation algorithm, optimal quantization, and variance reduction techniques (importance sampling and linear control variable), as the quantities of interest are naturally related to rare events. As a first step, we investigate the problem of CVaR regression, which corresponds to a static portfolio strategy where the number of units of each tradable assets is fixed at time 0 and remains unchanged till maturity. We devise a stochastic approximation algorithm and study its a.s. convergence and weak convergence rate. Then, we extend our approach to the dynamic case under the assumption that the process modeling the nontradable source of risk and financial assets prices is Markovian. Finally, we illustrate our approach by considering several portfolios in connection with energy markets.     

INTERORGANIZATIONAL TIME‐BASED POSTPONEMENT IN THE SUPPLY CHAIN

This paper presents the results of empirical research on the use of time‐based postponement in a supply chain context using data collected from two manufacturers, a distributor, and a retailer. The analysis shows that implementing postponement at the firm level can result in the supply chain carrying more inventory. In order to achieve its full potential, postponement needs to be implemented across organizations in the supply chain.