Architectural innovation in product development through early supplier integration

The paper explains how an important opportunity exists to pro-actively integrate suppliers at an early stage in the concept exploration and definition stages of product development. Research suggests that the concept of architectural innovation can be extended so that product features are matched with the associated specialized technical skills of partners in the development team.
In addition to the establishment of integrated product teams, key enablers include: long-term commitment to suppliers; co-location; joint responsibility for design and configuration control; seamless information flow; and retaining flexibility in the definition of system configuration. Important contributing factors include: supplier-capability-enhancing investments; target costing; and incentive mechanisms. To promote innovative outcomes in military and government programmes, attention is drawn to the importance of governments championing closely-knit customer-supplier relationships.
Firms can build enduring competitive strength by leveraging the specialized knowledge bases of their supplier networks. Two case-studies provide lessons to improve current approaches to the creation of long-term partnerships, or strategic alliances, with suppliers.     

Contingent Valuation Versus Choice Experiments: Estimating the Benefits of Environmentally Sensitive Areas in Scotland

This paper reports results from a study of the economic value of the conservation benefits of Environmentally Sensitive Areas (ESAs) in Scotland. The main novelty of the approach taken is in comparing two direct valuation methods, namely contingent valuation and choice experiments, to value these benefits. The Contingent Valuation Method (CVM) is well-established as a technique for valuing the sorts of landscape and wildlife enhancements associated with ESAs. The CVM experiment reported here uses a dichotomous choice format, and includes a new correction for part-whole bias. Choice experiments are much less used as an environmental valuation technique. We note several advantages of such experiments over CVM, and then report characteristic values and ‘programme values’ estimated using the method. This application brings to light some problems in applying the choice experiment method. Finally, we discuss the issue of benefits transfer in the context of these two approaches to valuation.     

Linear versus process tracing approaches to judgment modelling: A new perspective on cue importance

For a bankruptcy prediction problem, the judgment formation process is studied using linear models and process tracing models. The linear models are constructed using traditional linear discriminant analysis techniques. The process tracing models are constructed using computer-generated algorithmically-based decision nets. All the models presented show good predictive accuracy. However, the linear models and process tracing models diverge widely on several measures of cue importance. This divergence, for a fairly straightforward problem, is intriguing since virtually all the evidence in the accounting literature about cue importance is based on linear models research. The importance of different information cues to decision-makers is clearly a critical issue in the design of effective accounting information systems. Thus, this study suggests the need for much more careful attention to the complex question of assessing cue importance.