A service analytic approach to studying patient no-shows

Service Business - Patients who fail to show up for an appointment are a major challenge to medical providers. Understanding no-shows and predicting them are keys to developing a proactive strategy...     

Strategic responses to frontier-based budget allocation: Implications for bureaucratic slack

This paper analyzes the effect on bureaucratic slack of letting a sponsor apply a simple frontier-model in the budgetary process. The relationship between the sponsor and the bureaus is described within a simple game theoretic framework in which the sponsor is given the option of utilizing the frontier-technology when allocating a fixed budget to the bureaus. The effect on bureaucratic slack is shown to be ambiguous. However, conditions under which the sponsor benefits from applying the frontier-model are identified. It is also shown that collusion between bureaus does not destroy the possible benefit of applying the frontier-model.     

UML modelling concepts of HAZOP to enhance the ability to identify emerging risks

Unified Modelling Language (UML) has a graphical notation for 13 different types of diagrams and can be used as a general modelling tool. Well-known examples of diagram types are class diagrams for modelling classes that can be instanced into objects, state machine diagrams for modelling states in systems and activity diagrams for modelling process flows. A literature survey shows that UML has been used to model concepts and methodologies of risk assessment and risk management. One example is the Coras Framework. The international standard CEI IEC 61882 Hazard and operability (HAZOP) studies describes concepts for investigating and detecting possible hazards in systems. In CEI IEC 6882, guide words like ‘More’ and ‘Less’ are applied to system parameters to invoke deviations in the system and assess possible hazards due to the deviation from the design intent. In this paper, we have used UML to model concepts of CEI IEC 61882 Hazards and operability studies. Diagrams of UML were used to show dependencies and relations between parts of the target system and concepts of CEI IEC 61882. Extensions of UML are suggested to better capture and display the concepts of CEI IEC 61882, the results of a HAZOP study and emerging risk. These extensions are referred to as UML for emerging risks (UML-ER).     

Using house prices to compute the price of housing in the CPI

Rental-equivalence is often used in computing price changes of owner-occupied housing in the CPI. We use an alternative approach, employing interest-adjusted house prices. For Norway 2000–2008 our method yielded a 30% CPI-increase, compared to the official 17%.     

THE “WHITE SPACE” OF LOGISTICS RESEARCH: A LOOK AT THE ROLE OF METHODS USAGE

This paper examines the use of various research methods by contemporary researchers. The previous six years of articles in a leading logistics journal are examined and classified. The analysis seeks to identify and discuss changes and trends that are occurring in the use of such methods, as well as considering why the current conditions are in place, and what, if any, opportunities exist for logistics researchers given this situation.     

International benchmarking of electricity distribution utilities

Benchmarking by means of applying the DEA model is appearing as an interesting alternative for regulators under the new regimes for electricity distributors. A sample of large electricity distribution utilities from Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden and The Netherlands for the year 1997 is studied by assuming a common production frontier for all countries. The peers supporting the benchmark frontier are from all countries. New indices describing cross-country connections at the level of individual peers and their inefficient units as well as between countries are developed, and novel applications of Malmquist productivity indices comparing units from different countries are performed.     

Alignment of strategy and structure in local government

ABSTRACT

Strategic positioning and structural alignment in the public sector is a neglected area of research. This paper analyses the strategic positions of prospectors, defenders and reactors and structural alignment in Norwegian municipalities. Top managers responding to a survey perceived that the municipalities did align their organizational structures to the strategic positions for prospectors and defenders, but not for reactors, as hypothesized, but these relationships were modest. The top managers often found it difficult to provide consistent responses on their organizations’ choices of strategic positions.     

Agent-Based E-Supply Chain Decision Support

The global Internet economy is expected, over time, to give rise to increasingly agile practices where new supply chain arrangements are dynamically set up in response to changing business conditions and demands for highly customized products and services. To implement these "e-supply chain" practices, enterprises need the ability to rapidly evaluate new business opportunities and dynamically identify the best potential supply chain partners to respond to them. They also need the ability to effectively coordinate production and delivery of goods or services across the resulting value chains. In this article, we introduce MASCOT, an agent-based decision support environment for dynamic supply chain management. MASCOT agents help users distributed across multiple organizations and across different levels within a given enterprise to collaborate on the development and revision of supply chain solutions, as they evaluate different business opportunities (e.g., requests for bids from potential customers) and different sourcing options. This article also discusses new coordination protocols, developed within the context of MASCOT and aimed at better exploiting the power of finite capacity scheduling functionality across the supply chain. Empirical results are presented quantifying the benefits afforded by these new protocols under different loads and supply chain configurations.