Implementing organizational change in supply towards decentralization

This paper presents the findings from research in large companies investigating implementation issues faced by chief purchasing officers as their supply organization changed to greater decentralization. Once the decision was made to decentralize, responsibility for implementation was given to the chief purchasing officer (CPO). Firms changing their supply organization to a more decentralized structure faced a number of implementation issues, including the business unit concerns, role of the chief purchasing officer, top management involvement, changes to existing purchasing staff and the involvement of consultants. In the nine changes studied across seven companies, the decentralization process also required the CPO to address a number of simultaneous activities, including cost reduction objectives and implementation of information technology systems. A surprising “purchasing paradox” was also uncovered as top management still expected decentralized supply units to provide additional savings.     

Worktime Demands and Work-Family Interference: Does Worktime Control Buffer the Adverse Effects of High Demands?

This study examined whether worktime control buffered the impact of worktime demands on work–family interference (WFI), using data from 2,377 workers from various sectors of industry in The Netherlands. We distinguished among three types of worktime demands: time spent on work according to one’s contract (contractual hours), the number of hours spent on overtime work (overtime hours), and the number of hours spent on commuting (commuting hours). Regarding worktime control, a distinction was made between having control over days off and vacations (leave control) and having control over starting and finishing times (flextime). These three worktime demands were expected to have separate as well as joint effects on WFI, whereas worktime control should buffer these adverse effects of worktime demands on WFI. Stepwise regression analyses showed that working high numbers of contractual and overtime hours was indeed associated with high WFI. Further, worktime control indeed made a difference in terms of WFI: whereas leave control contributed directly to lower WFI, flextime buffered the adverse effects of long contractual workhours. Our results suggest that very long working days should be prevented, and that worktime control may be a powerful tool to help workers maintaining a good work–family balance.     

Timing under individual evolutionary learning in a continuous double auction

The moment of order submission plays an important role for the trading outcome in a Continuous Double Auction; submitting an offer at the beginning of the trading period may yield a lower profit, as the trade is likely to be settled at the own offered price, whereas late offers result in a lower probability of trading. This timing problem makes the order submission strategy more difficult. We extend the behavioral model of Individual Evolutionary Learning to incorporate the timing problem and study the limiting distribution of submission moments and the resulting offer function that maps submission moments to offers. We find that traders submit different offers at different submission moments the distribution of which uni-modal with a peak moving from late to early as the market size increases. This behavior exacerbates efficiency loss from learning. If traders evaluate profitability of their strategies over longer history, orders are submitted later with the same effect of market size.     

Notes and communications

Partly in response to the increase in terrorist attacks on civilian targets, the public discourse in the developed world has been shifting its focus to questions of security. This communication reviews ways in which aggression and security have been incorporated within economic models of crime, law enforcement and defense as well as approaches in other fields that might offer a suitable framework.     

Alternative space futures: The next quarter-century

Space developments do not exist in a vacuum! The shape of future space activities will depend on a combination of social, economic and political forces, creating the determinants for different patterns of space utilization. Forecasts of alternative space futures can therefore be explored by integrating different scenarios of world development and space trends. Here, alternative world trends are related to the underlying dynamics of space development, in terms of the economic, military and scientific utilization of space. The importance of space as a political issue is thus emphasized, in that the outcomes of policy choices to be made both now and in the future will help shape the social and economic contexts in which space technology will be used in the decades ahead.     

Food for a growing world population

This report describes summarily the set-up and main conclusions of the project “Food for a doubling world population”. It has to be seen as a preview-rather than as a summary-of the final report, as the model is not discussed explicitly in the present paper. The final report on the study-containing a detailed presentation of aims, methods and results—will appear under the title “MOIRA—A Model of International Relations in Agriculture”, North-Holland Publishing Company, Amsterdam, in the course of 1977. Besides the present authors, R. Brolsma, J. Bruinsma, P. Buringh, G.J. Staring, M. van der Vlis and C.T. de Wit had an active part in the multi-disciplinary project.     

The impact of financial reporting quality on debt maturity: the case of private firms

We examine whether the debt maturity structure of privately held firms is associated with the quality of their earnings numbers. We argue that earnings numbers that are better able to predict future cash flows lower information asymmetry between privately held firms and their creditors, improving privately held firms’ access to long-term debt. Furthermore, we examine whether the relationship between privately held firms’ earnings quality and their debt maturity differs between small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and larger privately held firms. Using detailed financial statement information from a sample of privately held Belgian firms, we find that earnings quality is positively associated with the likelihood of having long-term debt and with the proportion of long-term debt in total debt. Further, we report evidence that these associations are more pronounced for SMEs than for larger privately held firms, which is consistent with smaller firms entailing more fundamental risk for creditors.     

An optimisation strategy for concurrent Supply Chain Finance schemes

The uncertainty and financial instability that has plagued companies and industries in the last decade is one of the root causes behind the development of Supply Chain Finance (SCF), a set of schemes aiming to optimise the management of financial flows at the supply chain level. Recent years have seen a proliferation of different SCF schemes, with different impacts on working capital costs and requirements throughout the supply chain. The practicality of SCF usage indicates that the concurrent adoption of multiple schemes is not only possible, but even likely. However, literature on SCF still focuses on individual SCF schemes, while the concurrent adoption of multiple SCF schemes remains largely unaddressed. Thus, the objective of this paper is to assess the tangible benefits deriving from a multi-scheme SCF strategy. Based on the analytical formulation of the benefits of three relevant SCF schemes (Reverse Factoring, Inventory Financing and Dynamic Discounting), the paper formalises a model that investigates the benefits that a buyer can achieve by onboarding suppliers onto these three schemes. The results show how working capital requirements and the cost of finance represent the key parameters to assessing the benefits of the concurrent adoption of multiple SCF schemes. Moreover, the funding limits of the SCF schemes themselves strongly affect the relevance of such strategies; strict limits will increase the relevance of having ‘alternative’ schemes available to onboard suppliers. To highlight the managerial relevance of the model, the article provides a numerical example based on a real-world application.     

The effect of internal and external technology sourcing on firm performance throughout the technology life cycle

In studies about the impact of technology sourcing on firm performance, the impact of the technology life cycle has thus far received scant attention. This paper investigates this topic from the knowledge-based perspective. Data was gathered from 22 PLD (Programmable Logic Device) manufacturers in the integrated circuit industry between 1986 and 2005, and used to test two hypotheses based on panel analysis: (1) that strategic alliance networks, as a mode of external technology sourcing, have a positive effect on a firm's innovative and market performance early in the technology life cycle, and (2) that internal development as a mode of internal technology sourcing has a positive effect on a firm's innovative and market performance later in the technology life cycle. Although both hypotheses are supported as far as market performance is concerned, neither is supported when it comes to innovative performance.