Identifying root causes of inefficiencies in road haulage: case studies from Sweden,Switzerland and Germany

ABSTRACT

Road haulage operations in general, and distribution in particular, are inefficient. Given the societal importance of road haulage and the low efficiency of the sector, road hauliers need to improve their operations and systematically tackle inefficiencies. However, the real causes of these inefficiencies, the ‘root causes’, have not been sufficiently examined in previous studies. This paper expands on prior research by adapting existing models that can be used to identify the root causes of inefficiencies, and to enable systematic improvements in road transport operations. Our research is based on a lean approach and an adapted version of Ishikawa’s model. It is shown as a matrix based on transport processes and the Ishikawa categories to identify the root causes of inefficiencies in road haulage that influence performance. The adapted model was tested in three road haulage case studies. Our findings suggest that most efficiency problems appear in the actual transport execution.     

Do auditors constrain intertemporal income shifting in private companies?*

This study investigates the association between private company auditing and intertemporal income shifting. Using a large reduction in the Finnish corporate tax rate as a strong incentive for income shifting and financial statement data coupled with proprietary information from the tax authorities, we analyse accruals and cost stickiness of small private companies. Our results reveal significant differences in accrual income shifting between audited and unaudited companies, but only among companies that on average could anticipate the tax reduction the most. Further, we find auditors to restrict sticky selling, general, and administrative cost behaviour that we hypothesise is associated with illegal actions. Additional tests expose a nontrivial number of incorrectly unaudited companies which are the ones mostly associated with income shifting. Taken together, our study highlights the effects of audit exemption and the importance of enforcement while also suggesting that the audit process is value adding for the tax authorities.     

Keeping others in our mind or in our heart? Distribution games under cognitive load

It has recently been argued that giving is spontaneous while greed is calculated (Rand et al., in Nature 489:427–430, 2012). If greed is calculated we would expect that cognitive load, which is assumed to reduce the influence of cognitive processes, should affect greed. In this paper we study both charitable giving and the behavior of dictators under high and low cognitive load to test if greed is affected by the load. This is tested in three different dictator game experiments. In the dictator games we use both a give frame, where the dictators are given an amount that they may share with a partner, and a take frame, where dictators may take from an amount initially allocated to the partner. The results from all three experiments show that the behavioral effect in terms of allocated money of the induced load is small if at all existent. At the same time, follow-up questions indicate that the subjects’ decisions are more impulsive and less driven by their thoughts under cognitive load.     

Assessing the impact of nocturia on health-related quality-of-life and utility: results of an observational survey in adults

Background and aim: The impact of nocturia (getting up at night to void) on health-related quality-of-life (HRQoL) is often under-estimated. This study investigated the relative burden in terms of HRQoL and utilities of nocturia in a real-world setting.

Methods: Patient data were collected from two surveys: a nocturia-specific, cross-sectional survey of physicians and their patients (DSP), and a general UK population health survey (HSFE). Utilities (EQ-5D-5L), productivity (Work Productivity and Activity Index), and the impact of nocturia symptoms (Nocturia Impact Diary and Overactive Bladder Questionnaires) were assessed against the number of voids. A robust linear regression model with propensity score weights was used to control for confounding factors in estimating utilities.

Results: Physician-recorded data were available from 8,738 patients across the US, Germany, Spain, France, and the UK; of these, 5,335 (61%) included patient-reported outcomes. In total, 6,302 controls were drawn from the two surveys and compared to 1,104 nocturia patients. Deterioration of HRQoL was associated with increasing number of night-time voids (p?p?p?Limitations: The cause of nocturia is multifactorial and the mostly elderly patients may have several concomitant diseases. The authors tried to adjust for the most common ones, but there may be diseases or unknown relationships not included.

Conclusions: Nocturia negatively affected HRQoL and patient utility. A clear effect is seen already at two voids per night. Every effort should, therefore, be made to reduce nocturia below the bother threshold of two voids per night.     

The association between individual audit partners’ risk preferences and the composition of their client portfolios

We explore whether audit partners’ attitude towards risk, as measured by their personal criminal convictions, are reflected in the composition of their client portfolios. Analyzing a unique dataset of Swedish audit partners’ criminal convictions, we find that the clients of audit partners with criminal convictions are characterized by greater financial, governance, and reporting risk than those of audit partners without criminal convictions. Also, clients of audit partners with criminal convictions pay larger audit fees, on average, than those of auditors without criminal convictions.     

The effectiveness of personalized marketing in online banking: A comparison between search and experience offerings

This study reports the results of personalized online promotions in a context where personalization has not been researched before – in online banking. Genuine online bank customers were shown personalized banner advertisements when they logged in to their online bank account. Three financial offerings consisting of different search and experience attributes were promoted to three groups of customers. We examined the attention, elaboration and choice measures, and compared the effectiveness of personalized banners to default banners, and the online promotions to direct-mail promotions. Despite the goal-directed routines that reflect the dominant customer behaviour in online banking, personalized banners attracted more attention than default banners. Furthermore, messages that promote fairly simple search-type offerings that are easy to apply and are linked to the context in which the promotion occurs are more effective than messages that do not fulfil these criteria. The results offer implications both for research and practice.     

On the Gram series on Pearson's system of frequency functions

Abstract

Among the manifold frequency curves that may conceivably arise when it is assumed that, instead of the variate χ itself, a function of the latter, u = ψ(χ), is normally distributed, the logarithmic normal curve occupies a unique position for two reasons: it can be theoretically deduced from a slightly modified elementary error hypothesis and it is applicable in practice to different cases.     

Tourism as a mixed industry: Differences between private, public and not-for-profit festivals

This paper discusses important policy and management implications of tourism as a mixed industry in which public, not-for-profit, and private organisations such as festivals both compete and collaborate in creating the tourist product. To illustrate, four samples of festivals from the UK, Australia, Norway and Sweden are systematically compared in terms of their ownership, governance, structure, and content. Although the festivals offered a similar product and had similar mandates, they differed considerably in terms of revenue sources, cost structure, use of volunteers, corporate sponsorship, and decision-making. These differences are potentially important to destinations that view festivals as attractions and use them in place marketing. Implications are drawn for festival management and tourism policy, and recommendations are made for extending this line of inquiry to the tourism industry as a whole.     

An analysis model of tourism academic networks: a Swedish case study triangulated with an EU research project

The purpose of this research is to investigate and develop an analysis model of a tourism department network using an explorative approach. Strategic stakeholders have been identified for the tourism department and organised into partner groups. An analysis model has been developed based on four network types: formal organisation, informal organisation, formal individual and informal individual. For every type, the following six network content dimensions were found relevant to analyse: stakeholders, reciprocal relations, relation exchange, network driving forces, network management and network purpose. The investigations have shown some focused network strengths such as network permanency, with corresponding weaknesses such as rigid relations. Some typical implications of the strengths and weaknesses for the department have been identified, and some network techniques to handle the implications have been proposed. An annual network development process for a tourism department is suggested. The resulting network is summarised as the Professional Tourism Academic Network (PTAN).