Simulation as an aid in community planning: A case study of a community to be built around a health center in Guadalajara,Jalisco, Mexico

One type of model which has a history of application is known as a state-space model. Designed originally to test the impact of market reforms in Latin American communities, the model is of the static, deterministic stimulation family. It enjoys the advantage of employing explicit assumptions which tend to involve the decision maker in its operations. This probably led to the implementation in Northeast Brazil of recommendations that came after sensitivity testing of the model.In order to describe this type of model, a case study is presented which deals with the evaluation of decisions concerning the functions of the planned community near Guadalajara, the capital of the State of Jalisco, in Mexico. The uniqueness of the situation, that it is a private development containing a medical center, offered a difficult problem in parameter estimation. Also, the lack of complete information led to the formulation of approximations similar to those made by executives in incorporating heuristic devices.     

Trends in rural healthcare delivery in the United States, 1990-1999

This article describes the results of a literature search of pertinent professional literature written on issues important to rural healthcare delivery in the United States. The purpose of the literature review was to provide journal articles to practicing rural healthcare leaders who, because of time and economic constraints, claimed they were unable to research their own relevant journal articles. The authoring team is composed of individuals who work as full-time faculty members at institutions that offer courses in health administration. Because the nature of their professional work and research dictates that they focus on areas of rural health, the authoring team offered to share their findings with rural administrators as a means to assist them. The intent was to form a working collaboration between health services management professionals in academia, representatives of the state's healthcare organizational affiliate associations, and professionals practicing in the industry. This ten-year collaboration resulted in a unique wedding of resources that helped both in the delivery of rural healthcare services in a western state and in the advancement of the field of health services administration through original research. Thus, the product of this literature search is a comprehensive study of the trends in rural healthcare delivery. The variety of topics discussed were gleaned from over 500 articles found in and summarized from 70 professional healthcare journals published between 1990 and 1999.     

Evaluating the sustainability of the gray-whale-watching industry along the pacific coast of North America

This paper reports on the first study to critically examine the sustainability of whale-watching practices along the entire migratory range of a pelagic baleen whale species, the gray whale (Eschrichtius robustus). Commercial boat-based whale-watching operations along the west coast of North America were observed for sustainable practices. Data recorded aboard whale-watching vessels and collected via an online survey were integrated into the Lean Six Sigma quality-improvement tool, in order to review business processes and identify where inefficiency or ineffectiveness exists in specific phases within a process. Whale-watching practices were analyzed using this method for 24 whale-watching companies operating in Canada, the United States and Mexico. The results show a high level of variation in management regimes, and operator non-compliance with guidelines, and highlight avenues to eliminate, revise or reduce inefficiency, and improve practices in the interests of high-quality and sustainable operations. We recommend more specific and operational guidelines that allow operators to focus on high compliance with the most critical aspects of their business operation in order to build the sustainability of commercial tourist interactions with gray whales in their migratory range.     

Who leaves,where to,and why worry? employee mobility,entrepreneurship and effects on source firm performance

We theorize that the value provided by the firm's complementary assets has important implications for the exit decisions of employees and their subsequent effects on the firm's performance. Using linked employee‐employer data from the U.S. Census Bureau on legal services, we find that employees with higher earnings are less likely to leave relative to employees with lower earnings, but if they do, are more likely to create a new venture than join another firm. Employee entrepreneurship has a larger adverse impact on source firm performance than moves to established firms, even controlling for observable employee quality. Our findings suggest that in knowledge intensive settings, managers should focus on tailoring compensation packages to help minimize the adverse impact of employee entrepreneurship, particularly among high performing individuals. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Incentives and the structure of teams

This paper studies the relationship between moral hazard and the matching structure of teams. We show that team incentive problems may generate monotone matching predictions in the absence of complementarities in the production technology. Second, we analyze how complementarity in the underlying technology affects the matching predictions arising due to moral hazard. We find that (i) even when the production technology is strongly complementary, the incentive problem may lead to formation of negatively sorted teams; (ii) as the degree of complementarity increases, the optimal matching structure may switch from positive to negative, solely due to the need to provide incentives.     

Freight train scheduling with elastic demand

A train slot selection model based on multicommodity network flow concepts is developed for determining freight train timetables for scheduling rail services along multiple interconnected routes. The model seeks to minimize operating costs incurred by carriers and delays incurred by shippers while ensuring that the schedules and demand levels are mutually consistent. A column generation-based methodology is proposed for train slot selection to meet frequency requirements. This methodology is embedded in a simulation-based iterative framework, where demand for rail services is re-computed in accordance with the train schedule obtained by solving the freight train scheduling problem.     

The Japanese Automobile Tyre Industry under Scrutiny

This paper investigates the evolution of competition in the Japanese tyre market from 1976 to 2010 (35 years). An innovative measure of competition developed by Jan Boone is employed, as well as traditional competition indices and price–cost margin regressions, using accounting data at the firm level. Traditional indicators such as the concentration ratio and Herfindahl–Hirschman Index (HHI) suggest a very high market concentration. However, regressions using the two Boone measures and price–cost margin suggest that some competitive behavior in the Japanese tyre industry exists. By introducing dummy variables for the Sumitomo–Ohtsu merger and antimonopoly action by the Japan Fair Trade Commission, the Boone-style regressions also suggest that the merger had no impact, but the cartel breakup did have a statistically significant (p < 0.1) impact on firm’s profitability in this oligopolistic market.