Critical challenges of inventory management in service parts supply: A Delphi study

The primary purpose of the study is to determine the critical challenges facing service parts managers and to help bridge the gap between research and practice. In order to accomplish this, a series of semi-structured interviews with 18 senior service parts managers from a variety of industries frequently dealing with service parts inventory issues was used as the basis of input for a web-based Delphi study. The results of the study include 18 commonly identified potential service parts inventory issues and ten key challenges for the service parts supply industry. The identified challenges should serve as a guide for both researchers seeking to contribute to the service parts body of knowledge and practitioners who are regularly faced with service parts inventory issues.     

Avoiding the ‘SoHo Effect’ in Baltimore: Neighborhood Revitalization and Arts and Entertainment Districts

This article investigates how state‐sponsored ‘arts and cultural districts' and ‘creative placemaking' revitalization strategies affect urban neighborhoods, using the Station North Arts & Entertainment (A&E) District in Baltimore, Maryland (USA) as a case study. Through ethnographic participatory methods and 39 qualitative interviews, we studied the activities and attitudes of various stakeholders within Station North. Since its designation as an arts and entertainment district in 2002, a number of public–private partnerships have helped increase home values in Station North, suggesting that the ‘branding' of Station North has been successful. While the institutions involved in the district, including community development corporations and local universities, are careful to insist that they do not want to displace low‐income residents, many interviewees expressed concerns that these institutions exert influence outweighing that of longtime residents. While a certain level of gentrification has occurred with the arrival of new residents, we argue that the people who are most likely to be displaced from the arts and entertainment district in the future are, paradoxically, artists, especially those who wish to buy homes and settle in the district. After discussing the case of Station North, we consider broader implications of the use of arts for urban revitalization.     

The Influence of Sociodemographic and Lifestyle Factors on Consumers’ Healthy Cereal Food Choices

An increase in the dietary intake of wholegrain cereals can reduce the risk of developing certain non-communicable diseases and can play an important role in a healthy diet. However, consumption of wholegrain cereals across many countries is lower that the recommended guidelines. The main objective of this research was to gather purchase-related information from end users on different types of cereal foods. A mixed research methodology was used to identify key sociodemographic and lifestyle factors that may influence consumer acceptance of new cereal foods. Three distinct clusters were identified based on six identified lifestyle dimensions. This research suggested that the combined use of sociodemographic and lifestyle segmentation variables could help identify specific consumer segments that can be used in the market-oriented development of new cereal foods.     

Hard Bargains and Lost Opportunities

A long tradition in economics assumes that any potential gains from trade will be exploited. This emphasis on efficiency clashes with the possibility that hard bargaining over the division of the surplus may cause some potential deals to be lost. We examine an Outside Option Game designed to study the tension between maximising the size of the surplus and bargaining over the division of this surplus among those who contributed to its creation. An experimental study confirms that subjects often fail to achieve efficient outcomes. A theoretical model accounts for this behaviour in terms of an equilibrium achieved in an imperfect world     

Are urban land tenure regulations in Namibia the solution or the problem?

Land tenure in Namibia is regulated by a variety of Acts, some of which date back to as far as 1937, and some of which are yet to be approved by Cabinet. This variety of Acts makes it difficult to evaluate the performance of land administration as a whole, and the appropriateness of coercive instruments with regards to urban land tenure in particular. In this article we evaluate how urban land tenure regularization practices are conducted in Namibia, and to compare new formal procedures, designed to address problems of efficiency and efficacy, to older existing procedures, supposedly not efficient or effective. This evaluation uses a theoretical framework of Pritchett and Woolcock [Pritchett, L., Woolcock, M., 2004. Solutions when the solution is the problem: arraying the disarray in development. World Development 32 (2), 191–212], which deals with public service delivery and transaction-intensive services. Applying this framework for a comparative analysis of 5 different land subdivision practices – each relying on a different land-related act – we conclude that the degree of regulation and regularization is perhaps not so much a solution for urban land tenure problems but more of a problem in itself.     

The Workweek of Capital and Capital Utilization in Manufacturing

Over the typical intervals of time studied in economic analysis, the flow of capital services is not a fixed proportion of the capital stock. Much of the short-run variation in capital services comes from the duration of operations. This paper presents new estimates of the workweek of capital from the Census Bureau' Survey of Plant Capacity (SPC), both for our own analytical use and to make workweek data more widely available to other researchers. The paper uses these workweek estimates to reconsider various results in the literature on capital utilization and productivity growth.     

Fishing for Discrimination

The use of bogus, unsolicited job applications with the intention of measuring employment discrimination extends across 30 years and six countries. Preferential treatment of male applicants has been detected in Departments of Psychology in U.S. universities. Such investigations have also detected a relative disinclination to hire homosexuals in Ontario law firms, Turkish workers in Germany, older job applicants in the U.S.A., and the disabled in France. Many of these studies dispatched only a single application to employers; consequently they are a test of 'preferential treatment', rather than discrimination.     

Psychological contract breach and counterproductive workplace behaviors: testing moderating effect of attribution style and power distance

In this study, we examined the relationship between psychological contract breach (PCB) and counterproductive workplace behaviors (CWBs). We also explored two personal factors, namely casual attribution styles and power distance, in moderating the PCB–CWB linkage. One hundred and thirty-one full-time Chinese employees in Macao were recruited. Results showed that PCB was positively correlated with CWB. Furthermore, this relationship was moderated by external attribution style and power distance. In particular, employees who attributed the contract breach more to disruption and endorsed higher on power distance tended to report lower CWB. Limitation and implication are discussed.     

Sport in the News

Recent concentration on the importance of television has resulted in a decline in considering newspaper coverage of sport. A focus on the news pages is of particular interest, for here the general image of a sport is more likely to be constructed than by reports in the sports pages, which serve the interest of the committed enthusiast. Sixteen national and local newspapers were studied for one year. The analysis moves from the provision of some basic information (that is, how much coverage do various sports receive in the news pages?) to a consideration of the use of log-linear modelling and correspondence analysis as more appropriate ways of presenting the data.