Multidisciplinary and Multimethod Research for Addressing Contemporary Supply Chain Challenges

To achieve differential performance in today’s marketplace, supply chain decision makers must manage complex, multifaceted, and nuanced issues. To help decision makers, and advance the supply chain discipline, researchers need to consider how multidisciplinary and/or multimethod research can provide greater insight into today’s and tomorrow’s challenges and opportunities. We explore questions related to the supply chain–finance interface and global supply chain management to exemplify how multidisciplinary and multimethod research can increase the insight and influence of our research contributions.     

Sustainable Supply Chains in the Age of AI and Digitization: Research Challenges and Opportunities

Sustainability has become a global corporate mandate with implementation impacted by two key trends. The first is recognition that global supply chains have a profound impact on sustainability which requires “greening” the entire supply chain. The second is technology—digitization, artificial intelligence (AI), and “big data”—which have become ubiquitous. These technologies are impacting every aspect of how companies organize and manage their supply chains and have a powerful impact on sustainability. In this essay, we synthesize current dominant themes in research on sustainable supply chains in the age of digitization. We also highlight potential new research opportunities and challenges and showcase the papers in our STF.     

Outsourcing: Current and future trends

Highlighted are two reasons for outsourcing: cost and focus on the core competencies of the enterprise. Surveying U.S., U.K., and Continental Europe companies concerning current and future outsourcing trends positions outsourcing as a prominent strategic lever. Achieving “best‐of‐breed” practice is predicted to occur through new technology. Also, human resources and IT outsourcing will become more prominent. The results strongly indicate that partnership alliances and performance‐driven contracts will become as important as the current preferred, trusted supplier relationship. Keiretsulike, horizontal linkages will be required to realize scale and competency advantages from future outsourcing arrangements. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Grand strategies and strategic actions in the pharmaceutical industry 2001–2002

This paper explores the strategic actions realised by firms in the pharmaceutical industry during 2001 and 2002. The purpose was to develop an empirically derived categorisation of strategic actions and grand strategies from the behaviour of firms that could be used as the basis of a methodological framework for developing understanding of strategic change. Qualitative analysis was used to identify and categorise strategic actions implemented by pharmaceutical firms. Twenty-three grand strategies were identified and are described. Implications for further research in strategy development are discussed.     

Heterogeneous effects of child disability on maternal labor supply: Evidence from the 2000 US Census

Previous research has documented a negative relationship between child disability and maternal labor supply. Because of data limitations, most studies in this literature use broad measures of disability, which may obscure important differences among children with limiting health conditions. This paper presents new evidence on the labor supply of women with disabled children, exploiting disability information provided by 2000 US Census. This large nationally representative sample allows us to test for differences across different types of disabling conditions. We find that accounting for this heterogeneity in conditions is important. Using a broad definition of disability results in small differences between women with and without a disabled child. When we use a more detailed classification, we find larger labor supply reductions for mothers of children with physical disabilities or limitations in their ability to care for themselves. There is less evidence that having a child with either mental or emotional limitations or a sensory impairment is negatively related to employment or weekly hours. We also test for heterogeneous effects related to child age and maternal education. We find no clear pattern with respect to age and some evidence that the relationship between child disability and maternal labor supply is stronger for less educated mothers.     

Investment dealers' ways of working: Integrating compensation with relational capital

For the past 20 years, practitioner and academic research has highlighted that the performance of companies is linked to staff and management's ways of working, particularly in service‐oriented enterprises (A. P. Kakabadse, Savery, Kakabadse, & Lee‐Davies, 2006). Yet despite the monumental impact that financial institutions have on a nation's economy, few studies have examined the ways of working of investment dealers. In the finance literature, two distinct bodies of thought have endeavored to grasp the enigmatic nature of financial markets, investor behavior, and investment decision making. These are, on the one hand, the more traditional finance theories and, on the other, behavioral theories that examine, respectively, the quantitative and qualitative psychological attributes of individually driven investment decisions. Yet it appears that both areas do not meaningfully consider the impact of contextual dynamics on investment decisions (A. Kakabadse, 2000). In response, this article attempts to redress this imbalance by presenting emerging findings from 41 interviews with corporate finance specialists and managers employed in retail and institutional broker departments. Presented is an array of evidence highlighting that employees' ways of working are influenced by investment‐related demographics—namely, structure of compensation and the disciplined pursuit of relational capital. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

IT APPLICATIONS IN SUPPLY CHAIN ORGANIZATIONS: A LINK BETWEEN COMPETITIVE PRIORITIES AND ORGANIZATIONAL BENEFITS

Information technology (IT) is the backbone of supply chain management (SCM). However, selection of specific IT applications must be made in alignment with the organizations' competitive priorities. This article profiles differences between firms based on their level of IT usage focusing on organizational competitive priorities, choice of specific IT applications, and performance measures achieved.     

Gender factors and female entrepreneurship: International evidence and policy implications

Nowadays, the transformations taking place in female entrepreneurship at the national and international levels and the importance of such entrepreneurship for economic growth and poverty alleviation underscore the need for more global and diversified analysis of female entrepreneurial activities. The literature however regarding international comparisons of female entrepreneurship practices remains limited and becomes even more limited when exploring such practices beyond the developed countries context. To this end, this paper examined the impact of five gender-related variables on the extent of female entrepreneurial activities in 44 developed and developing countries. Among its five focused variables, the paper found female education, extent of female economic activities, female earnings ratio, and fertility rate to be significant in all estimations with two different dependent variables representing female entrepreneurial activities. The remaining focus variable related to gender empowerment was found to be significant with one of the two dependent variables. Among its contributions, the paper explored gender entrepreneurship from an international perspective and extended the analysis of the topic beyond the main stream Anglo-Saxon context. It also highlighted the variations in results with regards to developed and developing countries environment. Understanding factors that could influence the development of female entrepreneurial activities and exploring their potential variability across stages of economic development could also be useful for policy makers exploring effective incentive structure to promote gender entrepreneurship in their respective countries.     

Banking Structure,Marketization, and Small Business Development: Regional Evidence From China

This paper provides an empirical examination of the regional banking structures in China and their effects on entrepreneurial activity. Using a panel of 27 provinces and four directly controlled municipalities from 1997 through 2008, we find that the presence of large banking institutions negatively correlates with small business development in local markets and that this negative relation is driven mainly by participation of large banks in the short‐term loan market. Rural banking institutions, in contrast, are found to promote regional entrepreneurial activity. Moreover, large state banks facilitate small business development in concentrated markets. When we interact measures of banking financing by state banks and rural banking institutions with a set of provincial‐level marketization indexes, we find that extensive marketization, factor market development and sophistication of legal frameworks mitigate the negative effect of large state banks on small business development. In provinces with advanced market development, efficient factor markets and favourable institutional settings, the positive effect of rural banking institutions on small business growth is even stronger.     

Cost-effectiveness of sorafenib versus best supportive care in advanced hepatocellular carcinoma in Egypt

Background: In light of constrained budgets and the need to fund efficient treatment options, this study set out to assess the cost-effectiveness of sorafenib as a first-line treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) compared to best supportive care (BSC) from the military hospital perspective in Egypt.

Methods: A decision analytic Markov model simulated disease progression with clinical parameters and utility values derived from published data. Data on direct medical costs were collected from the local healthcare system or payer. Costs and effects were discounted at 3.5% annually and reported in USD using purchasing power parity adjustments. Deterministic and probabilistic sensitivity analyses were conducted.

Results: Mortality occurred less frequently in the sorafenib group (sorafenib group: 99.96%, BSC group: 99.99%). The total quality-adjusted life years (QALYs) of the sorafenib cohort were estimated to be 46.24 compared with 42.27 for the BSC cohort, which resulted in an incremental gain of 3.96 QALYs. The total costs for the sorafenib and BSC cohorts were USD 4,229,940 and USD 3,092,886, respectively (incremental cost = $1,137,054), resulting in an incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER) of USD 286,776 per QALY gained for the sorafenib cohort. One-way sensitivity analyses that addressed the uncertainty of the BSC estimates indicated that the progression-free survival for BSC and utility value of progression had the greatest effects on the results.

Conclusion: This study concluded that sorafenib does offer increased survival and quality-of-life at an increased cost but at an ICER that exceeds the nationally accepted cost-effectiveness threshold. The findings support healthcare decision-making of the efficient allocation of healthcare system resources to improve the health of the Egyptian population. Whether sorafenib is cost-effective in specific sub-groups with additional risk factors needs to be addressed in future studies.