Design and Implementation of Business Objects for Automated Business Negotiations

In recent years, there has been increasing interest in the specification, generation and exchange of business objects in the context of electronic commerce. Common business objects have been defined for product catalogs, purchase orders and other business entities. However, no business objects have been defined and implemented for supporting automated business negotiations even though business negotiation is very much an integral part of business activities. In this work, we have designed and implemented a set of business negotiation objects for supporting the bargaining type of business negotiations. These objects define the operations and information contents needed for negotiation parties to express their requirements and constraints during a bargaining process. They correspond to a set of negotiation primitives, which is a superset of the negotiation-related primitives defined in two popular languages: ACL and COOL. The implementation of these objects is patterned after the business object documents in the XML format proposed by the Open Applications Group, thus conforming to the established standard. The incorporation of several types of constraint specifications in these business negotiation objects provides the negotiation parties and the negotiation servers that represent them much expressive power in specifying callforproposals and proposals. Two synchronization problems and their solutions associated with the withdrawal and modification of negotiation proposals are addressed and presented in this paper. The use of these business negotiation objects in a bilateral bargaining protocol is also presented. We have validated the utility of these objects in an integrated network environment, which consists of two replicated negotiation servers, two commercial products, and some other university research systems that form a supply chain.     

SUPPLY CHAIN CAPITAL: THE IMPACT OF STRUCTURAL AND RELATIONAL LINKAGES ON FIRM EXECUTION AND INNOVATION

Firms invest millions of dollars annually in developing their supply chains, with the broad goal of increasing their own performance. However, despite the significant resources deployed for supply chain development, the extent to which initiating, maintaining, and managing supply chain relationships contributes to firm success remains unclear. The current article provides conceptual development supporting the valuation of firm‐to‐firm supply chain connections from the perspective of the focal firm. Based on the social network and economics literatures, the article introduces the concept of supply chain capital, which comprises the value of both the structural configuration and relationship content of the firm's supply chain network. Following theoretical development, a non‐exhaustive set of propositions are constructed illustrating multiple ways that supply chain capital can be accrued and exploited for firm‐level benefit. Managerial recommendations for investment in supply chain capital are included, as are future directions for research in the area of supply chain networks.     

The impact of globalization on networks and relationship dynamics

The largest grouping in the world of B2B researchers meets annually for the IMP Conference. Just like the Olympic torch, IMP brings like minded researchers together from across the world to share, refine and then disseminate ideas. The selection is discussed here of each of the eleven papers (some provocative) under the theme of: "The Impact of Globalisation on Networks and Relationship Dynamics". This brings up to the present day the global reality of dynamic markets and the change, adaptations and modifications that then often follow as a result.     

Inconsistency in inventory loss measurements under the LCM rule

This paper demonstratess that the propensity for student to rely on memorized measuremrnt shortcuts in the application of the LCM rule is attributable to a lack of clear measurement objectives for inventory losses in the professional standards. Any one of three possible definitions of loss might be applicable to a valuation case and there is no criterion for the selection of which loss concept is applicable until after the valuations have been made. Without an intelligble conceptual guide, students are left with only memorized rules in solving LCM problems.     

SLAVERY,FREEDOM, AND SEN

Amartya Sen's Development as Freedom argues that the ability to make choices is fundamental to economic development, and that the evaluation of outcomes can provide misleading answers. He uses the example of the high material consumption of US slaves relative to some free whites to illustrate this contrast. This paper discusses some of the implications of such comparisons and the problem of evaluating what might be regarded as favorable outcomes which come from unfavorable institutions (e.g., slavery). It appears that all good things do not necessarily go together. The past relation of enslavement to the need for subsistence is discussed. Differences in gender roles under slavery and after emancipation are also examined.     

Metaheuristics in Logistics and Supply Chain Management

The modeling of logistics systems is performed to seek the best possible system configuration to minimize costs or maximize operational performance, in order to meet or exceed customer expectations. Classically, analytic system analysis of this type has been performed using optimization, simulation, or heuristics. However, in the past two decades, a newer class of techniques, metaheuristics, has emerged as a capable method for quickly providing near‐optimal solutions for problems that exact optimization cannot solve. This article outlines recent advances in metaheuristics development, and considers the ability of these advanced techniques to resolve various logistics and supply chain problem types. Specifically, the article discusses the ant colony optimization, genetic algorithm, simulated annealing, and tabu search metaheuristics. The capabilities of these metaheuristic techniques to examine supply chain risk and disruptions, intermodal operations, customer service trade‐offs, backhaul strategies, and simultaneous facility location and vehicle route problems are proposed. The article concludes by describing how faculty can bring these techniques into the classroom to ensure their students enter the logistics and supply chain field with a current and relevant understanding of the state of the art in supply chain design techniques.