How to get parts out of prison (without paperwork).

This article describes the business relationship between a manufacturing company and a vendor that is a minimum-security correctional facility. In particular, it describes a set of revisions in the purchasing and delivery process that reduced the amount of paperwork substantially and also reduced the turnaround time.     

Humor: no materiel manager should be without it

Humor has the potential to be positive or negative, character building or destructive. Many suggest that a sense of humor is necessary for good health, whether of an individual or an organization. This article presents ways in which managers can foster a "laughing with" (instead of "laughing at") attitude as a means of managing stress, enhancing teamwork, and maintaining employee satisfaction in the face of adversity.     

Desperate entrepreneurs: no opportunities,no skills

Promoting entrepreneurship has become an important policy strategy in Europe in the hope to stimulate the crisis-shaken economy. In this paper, we caution against undue expectations. Using data from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor for 17 European countries, we find that a considerable proportion of the new entrepreneurs have started a business despite a negative perception of business opportunities as well as lack of confidence in their own entrepreneurial skills. This proportion has increased during the economic crisis, especially in those countries which were particularly affected by economic downturn and rising unemployment. We extend existing entrepreneurship theories to account for this phenomenon, which we call “nons-entrepreneurship”. Testing the hypotheses derived from our model, we find that the primary motivation for these people to turn to entrepreneurship is the lack of other options to enter the labour market during the economic crisis. Still, this sort of “desperate” entrepreneurship does not equal necessity based entrepreneurship, warranting further research.     

Group Purchasing Organizations,Monopsony, and Antitrust Policy

Group purchasing organizations (GPOs) consolidate the purchasing power of their members and negotiate contracts with input suppliers on their behalf. GPOs have received attention from the Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission because of concerns over monopsony power and standardization of hospital production costs. GPOs have been criticized in the literature for their contracting practices, which may appear to be exclusionary, and their funding mechanism, which may lead to incentive incompatibility. We analyze these competitive concerns in turn. We find GPOs to be procompetitive and suggest an antitrust policy that preserves the benefits of GPO operations while protecting consumers from any competitive shortcomings. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

虚拟社会资本、网络口碑与购买行为

网络口碑以新型的传播方式,对消费者的购买行为日趋重要.虚拟社区成为口碑传播的一种重要的媒介环境,本文从虚拟社会资本的视角,探讨口碑影响力的内在机理.理论假设虚拟社会资本中结构维度、认知维度和关系维度通过对口碑搜寻主动性和信息价值的影响,作用于消费者的购买行为.实证分析基本验证了研究假设,为虚拟社区的运营管理和企业的口碑营销提供一些启示.     

改造YB99条外透明纸包装机重新包装GDX2无条外透明纸条盒烟

通过将1台淘汰的YB99条外透明纸包装机重新进行设计改造,对车间GDX2机组生产过程产生的无条外透明纸的半成品条盒烟进行条外透明纸重新包装,解决了GDX2机组因条盒剔除和条外透明纸外观质量不合格,其无条外透明纸的条盒烟无法整条回收的问题,有效地降低了GDX2机组条盒纸、小包透明纸的材料消耗,节约了生产成本。     

Cities, Borders, Distances, Non-Traded Goods and Purchasing Power Parity

Most empirical studies for the post Bretton-Woods period fail to find evidence of a long-run Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) relationship. An investigation into the failure of PPP is made in this study by using disaggregated price data. This disaggregation is on two levels: location (prices from US and Canadian cities rather than national aggregates) and type of goods (e.g., fuel oil, a tradable commodity and local public transportation, a non-tradable). This disaggregation allows for the testing of the importance of borders (implying an exchange rate), distances, and types of goods in the failure of PPP. The analysis conducted suggests that both country borders and distances play a significant role. However, there is mixed evidence concerning type of goods as an important determinant of the failure of PPP.     

Behavioral Decision Making in the (Q,R) Purchasing Model: An Experimental Study

This paper presents and analyzes the results of a decision‐making experiment in inventory management under uncertainty. The experiment included 81 participants who played the role of a small car importer facing random demand as in the (Q,R) model. The results show strong evidence of learning and convergence, and the average reorder point (R) closely approaches the optimal level for maximizing profits. However, the participants' decisions are still biased by realizations of extreme values of demand and loss of potential sales. We argue that participants are affected by recency, loss aversion, and, possibly, their own risk aversion. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

武汉中商集团商品采购剖析

武汉中商集团股份有限公司是大型商业上市公司，连续７年效益居全国同行业前１０名，２０００年实现销售额３０个亿，利税１．７亿。早在１９９８年初，集团公司就组建了中商集团供配货中心，对集团公司下属的８大卖场实行进销分离，集中采购，统一进货，统一核定售价，统一对供应商结算。供配货中心在运营一年后，以５００万流动资金实现了３．９亿元商品的购进，创造了１：７８的资本高速运作的奇迹，成为全国商业三大物流中心之一。中商集团物流系统之所以能取得如此业绩，是与其商品采购制度和采购策略息息相关的。１中商集团采购部门的…     

政府采购和企业采购的新工具--采购卡

研究了采购卡的管理方式,探讨了采购卡的应用流程。采购卡的应用加快了响应速度、铸就一种新的企业文化、简化采购流程、降低采购成本、密切与供应商的关系。探讨了应用采购卡容易出现的问题。     

Purchasing and supply management (PSM) competencies: Current and future requirements

Purchasing & Supply Management (PSM) competencies are the individual-level foundations of organisational PSM performance. In light of recent developments in the workplace and the external environment, the question of what PSM competencies are needed now, as well as in the future, becomes one of increasing importance. Analysing qualitative data from 46 interviews from 16 companies, this paper identifies what current and future competencies are required by PSM professionals, categorizes PSM competencies according to the framework established by Tassabehji and Moorhouse (2008) and establishes how these competency requirements have changed over the last ten years. The most important current competencies required by PSM professionals are negotiation, communication and relationship management (e.g. ‘Interpersonal communication’), strategy and analytics (e.g. ‘Strategic thinking’), as well as professional knowledge requirements (e.g. ‘Basic knowledge on PSM role & processes’). When looking at future requirements, competencies in the areas of sustainability and digitisation were identified as becoming increasingly important. Overall, 17 competencies in addition to those shown in Tassabehji and Moorhouse (2008) were identified. The most prominent new competency areas are related to digitisation (e.g. ‘eProcurement Technology’, ‘Automation’), innovation (e.g. ‘Innovative sourcing’) and sustainability. The interviewees also identified 11 new competencies within the interpersonal skills cluster, most of them at the intersection between competencies and traits (e.g. ‘Deal with Ambiguity’, ‘Curiosity’, ‘Passion’).     

船舶制造业JIT供需采购模型研究

鉴于船舶制造业存在的库存量大、供应链管理效率低下、生产成本过高等问题,通过构建船舶制造业JIT供需采购模型,分别从单一采购方利益和供需双方利益两方面,对船舶制造业JIT供需采购模型进行了分析。结果表明,综合考虑供需双方利益能有效降低船舶制造业采购成本,提高船舶制造业供应链管理效率,强化供需采购双方合作关系。     

There is no smoke without a fire: The effect of government interventions in less advanced economies

The lack of liquidity in the interbank market during the crisis of 2007–2011 led governments to impose different policies to rescue their countries’ banking sectors. While in advanced countries interventions in the banking sector were mostly related to a lack of liquidity and significant asymmetric information regarding counterparty risk, in many less advanced countries they had a precautionary motive. In our article, we investigate the effectiveness of policy interventions on healthy banking markets, with possible negative spill-over effects from other countries. To this extent, we use an event study methodology to test the effect of liquidity and financial sector policy announcements on interbank spread changes in six Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries over the period between 2007 and 2011. We find that standard liquidity interventions did not provide effective stabilization. In fact, our evidence suggests that the spread widened after their announcement, probably as a result of the negative signal and consequently increased risk aversion of banks. In such situations, regulators should consider policy instruments that aim to decrease uncertainty in the market.