bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Why Benefit-Cost Analysis Is Widely Disregarded and What to Do About It
Authors: Dorfman Robert 
Published: October 2008

Three prominent shortcomings of benefit-cost analysis as currently practiced are (1) it does not identify the population segments whom the proposed measure benefits or harms, (2) it attempts to reduce all comparisons to a single dimension, generally dollars and cents, and (3) it conceals the degree of inaccuracy or uncertainty in its estimates. These defects impair the usefulness of benefit-cost studies, divert effort and attention away from the most useful information benefit-cost studies could convey, and risk misleading many readers. These faults can be corrected or avoided without much difficulty and to great benefit.
An Investment Decision Making System
Authors: Ahlers David M. 
Published: October 2008

This paper describes the design, implementation and evaluation of a system for the management of pension funds by a large institutional investor. As a direct result of this management science based system, which had been in operation for over three years prior to this study, the jobs of security analysts, portfolio managers and the management of the investment function were significantly changed. The institution publicly acknowledged the success of this system in its annual reports and internally acknowledged the additional business revenues generated by this new approach to money management. Three major aspects of this research which spanned a period of over six years are discussed. Initially the behavioral science analysis which helped to determine why classic portfolio selection or equity valuation models had not been accepted by the organization is reviewed. This phase also contains an analysis of the necessary changes to information flows and job responsibilities before the organization could reasonably be expected to accept any normative portfolio management tools. The focus is then directed toward the key management science concepts incorporated in the Management Information System which was designed to remove the behavioral barriers to change. The major tools and concepts employed and presented in this phase are the use of the triangular distributions to collect conditional, subjective forecasts and to provide subjective distribution feedback, loss functions which are based on the impact of outcomes to the institution and not on squared error variability and the construction of feedback measures which are consistent with the organizational responsibilities of the individual. The third phase of this study is an evaluation of whether investment performance was actually improved by the new system. Testing this and related hypotheses is complicated by the fact that it was difficult enough to convince management to install one new money management system, let alone several systems simultaneously to permit controlled tests. Some aspects of this are discussed in the final section.
Management Science's Impact on Service Strategy
Authors: Bleuel W. H. 
Published: October 2008

The practice of management science has made a significant impact on the performance of the Xerox service organization. The National Service department has implemented a new service strategy for the 9,200 duplicator which provides better service to the customers at less cost to Xerox. The basic management science concept behind this service strategy is the utilization of queuing theory to reduce the service force idle time and simultaneously reduce the response time to a customer initiated call for service. The results of the queuing analysis indicated that a major productivity improvement could be achieved with mini-teams. It was decided that a three man mini-team was the best compromise (in terms of manageability) between a one-man territory and team territories which had four or more service men. Implementation of this service strategy has yielded the following results: (1) Specification to Xerox customers of response times for customers initiated service calls, and (2) An average increase in productivity of the service work force for the 9,200 in excess of 50%.
Steps Towards More Effective Implementation of MS and MIS
Authors: Ginzberg Michael J. 
Published: October 2008

Our technical abilities to design and build complex management science (MS) models and sophisticated management information systems (MIS) have progressed quite rapidly in recent years. However, our ability to translate these models and systems into tools useful to managers has not kept pace. Efforts to implement MS models and information systems occasionally fail completely and often run into some sort of difficulty. This paper will review some of the steps that have been taken to increase our understanding of and, hopefully, our ability to solve this implementation problem.
Optimal Mining and Processing Decisions in Stratiform Phosphate Deposits
Authors: Metz Horst J. , Jain Suresh K. 
Published: October 2008

International Minerals & Chemical Corporation (IMC) is the world's largest privately-owned producer of phosphate rock, a bulk mineral used primarily in the production of agricultural fertilizers. The company operates several mines and processing plants in central Florida, and controls extensive phosphate resources in central and southern Florida. Like other firms engaged in the extraction of natural resources, IMC faces a general decision problem of determining the subset of resources in the ground that can be mined and processed economically. Land acquisition and plant expansion decisions, as well as tactical and strategic mining and processing plans, are all based in large measure on the company's a priori evaluation of resource data and its estimate of economic reserves. The facts that known phosphate resources are finite, that marketing conditions are highly variable, and that hundreds of millions of dollars are at stake all prompted IMC to assure itself that its mining and processing decisions constitute a financially optimal policy. This paper describes a new algorithm, developed by the authors and implemented by IMC, for making optimal mining and processing decisions.
Telephone Sales Manpower Planning at Qantas
Authors: Gaballa Adel , Pearce Wayne 
Published: October 2008

When the traditional procedure for planning annual manpower requirements for the telephone sales reservation offices of Qantas Airways was replaced by a model utilizing queueing and integer linear programming techniques, savings in excess of US$235,000 were realized in staff reductions over a two-year period, and investigation into applications in several other Qantas service areas continues. Relationships of staff size to waiting time and service time are also evaluated.
The Long Island Blood Distribution System as a Prototype for Regional Blood Management
Authors: Brodheim Eric , Prastacos Gregory P. 
Published: October 2008

Each year over two million hospitalized Americans depend upon the timely availability of the right type of blood products at 6,000 hospital blood banks (HBB's) in the United States. If the right blood products are not available at the HBB when required, then medical complications or postponements of elective surgery can result which translates to extra days of hospitalization and expense. On the other hand, since most blood products may only be administered to a patient of the same blood type within 21 days of collection, overstocking at HBB's leads to low utilization, which increases costs and is wasteful of the scarce blood resource. The Long Island blood distribution system was set up as a prototype of a regional blood center and the hospital blood banks that it services collaborating to preplan regional blood flow. It maximizes blood availability and utilization according to a Programmed Blood Distribution System (PBDS) model and strategy that has been shown to be generally applicable. PBDS schedules blood deliveries according to statistical estimates of the needs of each HBB and monitors actual requirements to adjust deliveries when indicated by control chart techniques. In addition, it provides a daily forecasting of short-term shortages and surpluses for the next several days that results in controlled movement of blood to and from adjoining regions. Finally, the system is able to adjust the regional strategy so that availability is reduced uniformly at all HBB's during periods of seasonal, regional shortages. PBDS has drastically improved utilization and availability of blood on Long Island: wastage has been reduced by 80%, and delivery costs by 64%. This prototype is acting as a model for other regional blood centers in the United States and for other national blood services as a basis for planning and controlling blood flow in a geographic area. It usually replaces preexisting procedures where a regional blood center collects blood based upon gross estimates and reacts to requests for blood by individual HBB's on the basis of experience and on the currently prevailing inventory situation.
Organizational Characteristics and Information Systems Planning: An Empirical Study
Authors: Premkumar G. , King William R. 
Published: October 2008

Information Systems (IS) planning has gained considerable interest among researchers and practitioners in recent years because of the large investments that firms have made in IS and the increasingly strategic nature of the impact of information systems on organizational performance. Since IS planning is performed in an organizational context, characteristics of the organization may have a significant influence on the quality and effectiveness of the IS planning process. A research model is developed that links two major dimensions of IS planning—the quality of the planning process and planning effectiveness—with a set of eight organizational factors derived from contingency research in IS planning, strategic business planning, organizational studies, and technology innovation. The model is validated using data collected from a field survey of 249 senior IS executives. Canonical correlation analysis is used to test the research hypotheses and validate the model. The results of the study indicate that the two planning dimensions respectively reflecting the “means” and “ends” of IS planning are equally important. The results also indicate that planning resources, the intended strategic impact of IS on future business operations, the quality of facilitation mechanisms, the quality of implementation mechanisms, and the quality of strategic business planning are significantly associated with the quality and effectiveness of IS planning. The implications of the results to further research and to managerial practice are highlighted.
Information Technology and Organizational Change in the British Census, 1801–1911
Authors: Campbell-Kelly Martin 
Published: October 2008

The first British census was taken in 1801 and was processed by a handful of clerks in a tiny office. By the mid-1800s, the census had evolved into an elaborate Victorian data-processing operation involving over a hundred clerks, each of whom had a specialized information-processing role. In 1911 the census was mechanized and the routine data processing was taken over by punched-card machines. This paper explores the changes in information technology within the census over a period of more than a century, and the resulting organizational changes. A contrast is drawn with the U.S. census—which mechanized in 1890—on the adoption of new technology.
Investigating Household Purchase Timing Decisions: A Conditional Hazard Function Approach
Authors: Jain Dipak C. , Vilcassim Naufel J. 
Published: October 2008

The purchase timing decision is an important component of the dynamics of a household's purchase behavior. This decision is influenced by marketing and other variables, and the modeling of this dependence has recently received attention in the literature. In this paper, we build on previous studies and develop a comprehensive stochastic model that incorporates the major factors influencing interpurchase times. Specifically, we use a generalized version of Cox's proportional hazard model to test among competing probability distributions for the interpurchase times while incorporating effects due to marketing variables, observed household characteristics, and unobserved heterogeneity across households. The empirical finding from analyzing the IRI coffee data, suggests that the interpurchase times cannot be adequately described by probability distributions such as exponential, Erlang-2 or Weibull. The effects of unobserved heterogeneity are significant, and they impact the estimates of the effects of the covariates. We also find that a nonparametric procedure for estimating the effects of unobserved heterogeneity provides the best overall fit to the data and yields covariate estimates that are more consistent with prior expectations. Our model is validated by replicating the substantive empirical findings on an additional product category.
Managing Advertising and Promotion for Long-Run Profitability
Authors: Jedidi Kamel , Mela Carl F. , Gupta Sunil 
Published: October 2008

In recent years, manufacturers have become increasingly disposed toward the use of sales promotions, often at the cost of advertising. Yet the long-term implications of these changes for brand profitability remain unclear. In this paper, we seek to offer insights into this important issue. We consider the questions of i) whether it is more desirable to advertise or promote, ii) whether it is better to use frequent, shallow promotions or infrequent, deep promotions, and iii) how changes in regular prices affect sales relative to increases in price promotions. Additional insights regarding brand equity, the relative magnitude of short- and long-term effects, and the decomposition of advertising and promotion elasticities across choice and quantity decisions are obtained.To address these points, we develop a heteroscedastic, varying-parameter joint probit choice and regression quantity model. Our approach allows consumers' responses to short-term marketing activities to change in response to changes in marketing actions over the long term. We also accommodate the possibility of competitive reactions to policy changes of a brand. The model is estimated for a consumer packaged good category by using over eight years of panel data. The resulting parameters enable us to assess the effects of changes in advertising and promotion policies on sales and profits.Our results show that, in the long term, advertising has a positive effect on “brand equity” while promotions have a negative effect. Furthermore, we find price promotion elasticities to be larger than regular price elasticities in the short term, but smaller than regular price elasticities when long-term effects are considered. Consistent with previous research, we also find that most of the effect of a price cut is manifested in consumers' brand choice decisions in the short term, but when long-term effects are again considered, this result no longer holds. Last, we estimate that the long-term effects of promotions on sales are negative overall, and about two-fifths the magnitude of the positive short-term effects.Finally, making reasonable cost and margin assumptions, we conduct simulations to assess the relative profit impact of long-term changes in pricing, advertising, or promotion policies. Our results show regular price decreases to have a generally negative effect on the long-term profits of brands, advertising to be profitable for two of the brands, and increases in price promotions to be uniformly unprofitable.
Optimal Sequencing Via Modular Decomposition: Characterization of Sequencing Functions
Authors: Monma Clyde L. , Sidney Jeffrey B. 
Published: October 2008

With the recent development of efficient algorithms for locating modules in a precedence network, a new class of sequencing algorithms has become promising. These algorithms obtain optimal sequences by finding optimal subsequences of progressively larger modules, until all jobs are sequenced. To guarantee optimality of resulting sequences, the sequencing (objective) function must satisfy the “job module property” defined herein. In this paper, three properties of sequencing functions are defined, and it is shown that a sequencing function satisfying these properties possesses the job module property; many other decomposition results previously shown by the second author to hold for the total weighted completion time problem follow as well. Moreover, the class of problems defined by these sequencing functions includes the total weighted completion time problem, the least-cost fault detection problem, and the total weighted exponential completion time problem.
Combinatorial Algorithms for the Generalized Circulation Problem
Authors: Goldberg Andrew V. , Plotkin Serge A. , Tardos Éva 
Published: October 2008

We consider a generalization of the maximum flow problem in which the amounts of flow entering and leaving an arc are linearly related. More precisely, if x(e) units of flow enter an arc e, x(e)γ(e) units arrive at the other end. For instance, nodes of the graph can correspond to different currencies, with the multipliers being the exchange rates. We require conservation of flow at every node except a given source node. The goal is to maximize the amount of flow excess at the source. This problem is a special case of linear programming, and therefore can be solved in polynomial time. In this paper we present the first polynomial time combinatorial algorithms for this problem. The algorithms are simple and intuitive.
The Throughput of Irreducible Closed Markovian Queueing Networks: Functional Bounds, Asymptotic Loss, Efficiency, and the Harrison-Wein Conjectures
Authors: Jin H. , Ou J. , Kumar P. R. 
Published: October 2008

Let N be the population of an irreducible closed Markovian queueing network, and denote by αu(N) the throughput of a scheduling policy u. The policy u is said to be efficient if limN→+∞αu(N) = α*, where α* is the capacity of a bottleneck station. The quantity J(u) ≔ limN→∞ N(α* − αu(N))/α* is called the asymptotic loss of u. The policy u is said to be asymptotically optimal if J(u) is as small as it can be. For multi-station irreducible closed Markovian networks, we obtain functional bounds on the throughput which are of the form αN/(N + v). The coefficients α and v are obtained by solving two linear programs (LPs), which consist of L(L + 3)/2 variables, where L is the number of buffers in the system. We are thus able to establish efficiency, as well as provide upper and lower bounds on asymptotic loss, through LP procedures. For balanced systems where all stations are equally loaded, we are able to provide reduced dimensional LPs which consist of just S(S + 1)/2 variables, where S is the number of stations in the system. We also show that the lower bound on asymptotic loss produced by the reduced dimensional LP can capture interactions between multiple bottlenecks in heavy traffic, and that it always dominates a bound obtainable by extending a conjecture of Harrison and Wein (HW) from two station systems to multi-station systems. Employing these bounds on two station systems, we prove that a certain policy developed by HW is efficient. This buffer priority policy was conjectured by them to be asymptotically optimal. They also conjectured a finite valued formula for the asymptotic loss of every buffer priority policy. This latter conjecture is not true in its full generality since there exists a certain buffer priority policy for a certain two station system which is not efficient, and consequently has infinite asymptotic loss. However, we provide credence to the conjectures by establishing that for balanced systems, the conjectured asymptotic loss of the HW-policy is a lower bound on the asymptotic loss of all policies, while the conjectured formula for the asymptotic loss applied to the exact opposite of the HW-policy is an upper bound on the asymptotic loss for all nonidling policies. The latter result is established under an additional condition identified by us which guarantees the finiteness of the asymptotic loss, and thus also the efficiency, of every nonidling scheduling policy.
Studies on Piecewise-Linear Approximations of Piecewise-C1 Mappings in Fixed Points and Complementarity Theory
Authors: Kojima Masakazu 
Published: October 2008

A PC1-mapping is a continuous mapping from a subset P of Rn into Rn, where P is partitioned into n-dimensional compact convex polyhedra. such that the restriction to each polyhedron is continuously differentiable. Based on the classical results on PL (piecewise linear) approximations of PC1-mappings given by Whitehead and an extension of the inverse function theorem to PC1-mappings, the following are investigated under nonsingularity conditions on piecewise linearizations of PC1-mappings with the use of their partial derivatives and conditions on the diameter and thickness of simplices on which PL approximations are affine: (1) One-to-one correspondence between solutions of a system of nonlinear equations and its PL approximations. (2) Monotone convergence of the continuous deformation method. (3) A lower bound of the convergence speed of the continuous deformation method. (4) Conditions which characterize local uniqueness of solutions to the nonlinear complementarity problem. (5) One-to-one correspondence between solutions of the nonlinear complementarity problem and their PL approximations. (6) Monotone convergence of the extended Lemke's method for PL approximations of the nonlinear complementarity problem.
Balancing rigour and relevance in guideline development for depression: The case for comprehensive cohort studies
Authors: Barkham Michael. , Parry Glenys. 
Published: November 2008

Purpose. Clinical guidelines for the treatment of depression have not yet realized their potential for improving the delivery of the psychological therapies within national healthcare systems. Current guidelines emphasize treatment efficacy and issues in service delivery are relatively neglected. Hence, there is a hierarchy of evidence in which randomized efficacy trials are given primacy over naturalistic (i.e. practice‐based) data. Such a strategy is inadequate to address important questions about best delivery of safe and acceptable psychological therapies and exacerbates divisions between research and practice communities.Methods. Selected narrative review.Results. Both randomized controlled trials and practice‐based studies have shortcomings that can be ameliorated by the adoption of practical clinical trials embedded within large cohort studies – that is, comprehensive cohort studies.Conclusions. Comprehensive cohort studies have the potential to deliver an evidence base which is both rigorous and relevant. This could satisfy the scientific community as well as allowing practitioners and service users to be fully involved and committed to the process of collecting evidence and implementing guidance. We argue this would be a sound foundation upon which to build an evidence base upon which to develop future clinical guidelines for depression.