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Marketing, entrepreneurship, operations management, and transportation/logistics.

The case is suitable for junior, senior undergraduate and first-year graduate business classes. It can be used entirely in business classes in marketing, entrepreneurship, operations management, and transportation/logistics, and parts of it can be used for discussions in classes related to emerging economies/markets, environmental management, sustainability, and technology management.

The case builds on the expansion plan considered by a young software company, called Hangzhou Omnipay located in the city of Hangzhou, China. Mr Chao, Vice President (VP) of Omnipay, is the main character of the case. He was aware of the current car-sharing industry leader – Zipcar headquartered in Boston and also identified multiple stakeholders in the city for decision making. By collaborating with a global student project team, Mr Chao collected a great deal of information and data. This teaching case provides students and educators ample opportunities to examine, from a multitude of aspects, the viability of a car-sharing service in Hangzhou.

The central goal is to help students gain a comprehensive understanding of the role of car-sharing service in a country's development in sustainability, socio-economy, environmental commitment, and new urban life style, as well as in a technological company's active pursuit of business expansion opportunity. In addition, students will not only understand the social, cultural, technological and strategic perspectives of car-sharing service implementation, but also develop and enhance analytic skills needed to conduct fundamental cost analysis, determine a base-line pricing scheme, and service location network design.

Teaching notes are available, please contact your librarian for access.

The quotation process tightly links the manufacturer and its suppliers and customers on a supply chain. An excellent record of successful quotes not only benefits trading partners, but also positions the manufacturer on the market in terms of its responsiveness, customer service, efficiency, and competitive pricing. In the existing literature, lean principles are generally applied to manufacturing only, this paper relies on a case study to show the application of lean manufacturing principles to the administrative function of the quotation process. In addition, the case demonstrates that electronic solutions are the best remedies for streamlining the quotation process to reduce the total cycle time – the basis for providing competitive prices and excellent customer service.

Although the literature on the strategic aspect of global sourcing is large, detailed studies on this procurement strategy from a process perspective are limited. This paper adopts the process viewpoint and examines the design and management issues associated with the global sourcing process based on a case study at a leading firm in the US aviation industry. The effectiveness of the company’s global sourcing process is evaluated, the design alternatives of the supply chain structure are compared, and the critical issues of efficient management of the process are summarized. Specifically, three logistics‐based criteria are developed to indicate the effectiveness of the transportation and distribution network. The paper also demonstrates that the process design can be assessed based on the dimensions of supply chain integration. Finally, a flow‐level matrix is developed to identify the critical issues of managing the global sourcing process.

The purpose of this paper is to study the managing of emergencies pertinent to public health which is critical to the well‐being of a society; as such, the management mechanisms employed should be of great interest and significance for research.

This paper first relies on extensive literature to describe the mechanism used in the USA from three aspects – organizational structure, management system, and logistics network. For the purpose of comparison, the Chinese version of the mechanism is presented from the same three aspects. The two management systems are then compared both qualitatively and quantitatively.

Deficient areas in Chinese public‐health management mechanism as well as challenging issues associated with supply chain design and coordination for emergency supplies in the context of large‐scale public health emergencies with low frequency but catastrophic impacts are found. Specifically, the following three important research problems are revealed from the comparative study: how to establish an efficient organizational structure that incorporates all the relevant entities in public‐health emergency management? How to establish an information system for emergency management that integrates disease surveillance, control, and prevention? How to design an efficient and cost‐effective logistics network to ensure prompt and sufficient delivery of emergency supplies?

To date, this research has been the first of its kind that compares two countries' emergency management systems in the context of public health management.

Global sourcing is becoming a prerequisite for companies competing in today's market. The logistics costs often comprise a large portion of the total global sourcing cost, thereby determining the effectiveness of this procurement strategy. However, evaluating the logistics cost in a global context is frequently difficult. This paper presents a five‐step evaluation framework and illustrates how this framework can be implemented using a case study at a leading firm in the US aviation industry and its part supplier in Chengdu, China. The framework not only identifies the key logistics cost items, but also suggests a way of quantifying each of the cost elements. The computational part of the framework can be easily implemented on spreadsheets and offers substantial flexibility to accommodate assessment of various transportation alternatives and sensitivity analysis.

While supply chain integration is measured at three levels: information, resources and organization, the emphasis of the paper is placed on how information integration can be achieved through B2B e‐hubs. After reviewing the concept of supply chain integration and the evolution of e‐hubs, we examine two groups of e‐hubs classified by supply chain processes, namely procurement and transportation, along with two case studies of each. A value‐gap analysis is performed from the perspectives of facilitating supply chain activities and connecting chain partners, revealing that gaps and limitations do exist in existing e‐hubs. Finally, we present a framework for integrating existing e‐hubs into other advanced information technologies, such as ERP and CRM, to bridge the gaps and to expand their functionality to provide better solutions to supply chain integration.

Prosumers’ creative performance in a co-creation activity is greatly affected by the disclosure of activity information. Extant research has separately examined the impact of participant numbers and the impact of platform transparency, but there is a lack of research on the interaction between the two. However, testing the joint effect of the two sources of information can provide a more comprehensive understanding of individuals’ co-creation behaviour. This paper aims to fill the gap and further reveal the psychological mechanism behind the behaviour.

Three experimental studies were conducted to test the hypotheses.

The results show that a large number of participants will stimulate and inhibit creative performances on untransparent and transparent co-creation platforms, respectively. Moreover, this study found that the effect of the number of participants on creative performance is mediated by arousal on untransparent platforms and by the constraint on idea expression on transparent platforms.

This study advances knowledge of how the number of participants in an activity and platform transparency jointly influence prosumers’ creative performance and the corresponding mechanism. However, the main limitation of the study is that the findings are from scenario-based experiments.

This study provides a more comprehensive understanding of prosumers’ creative performance under the influence of the number of activity participants and platform transparency. The findings can help co-creation sponsoring companies and co-creation platforms improve activity performance by designing better information disclosure strategies, thereby enhancing platform value.

The findings enrich the literature on platform ecosystem and co-creation by integrating previously separate knowledge on the effects of participant numbers and platform transparency. In addition, the findings deepen the overall understanding of prosumers’ behaviour.

As more evidence indicates that a corporation is very much defined by its purchases and benefited by its close partnership with the suppliers, the sourcing decision becomes increasingly important in the firm’s growth and profit. This paper synthesizes the available sourcing alternatives into four categories, namely multiple sourcing, single sourcing, single/dual hybrid or network sourcing, and global sourcing, and provides a comprehensive review of these purchasing methods based on extensive literature. Besides the discussion of the pros and cons, the paper focuses on the underlying factors that determine the preference and suitability of each sourcing option. In addition, with the note that numerous companies are switching to do business on a global basis, we attempt to use China as an example to examine global sourcing from the standpoints of both buyer and supplier.

Building process innovation capability (PIC) is becoming increasingly important to keep pace with changing business environments and emerging technological opportunities. However, the literature on process innovation capability (PIC) is still very broad and does not consistently reflect today's reality that is becoming increasingly complicated and knowledge-intensive, leading to more organizational needs for supporting less-structured business processes (LSBP).

Based on a systematic literature review (SLR), the authors provide evidence for this under-investigated subject by consolidating organizational capabilities for managing PIC in LSBP. The authors screened 1,083 and identified only 26 peer-reviewed articles that simultaneously encompass process innovation and LSBP.

The authors explain which LSBP types are typically addressed, and in which sectors. The authors categorize research avenues, best practices and a framework that links PIC to performance outcomes by also considering business environments. Three theories (i.e. resource-based view, dynamic capabilities and sociotechnical theory) help to underpin the six empirically observed capabilities along three pillars (i.e. people, process and technology).

Besides a research agenda, the authors offer a conceptual framework for PIC in LSBP as a reference to guide scholars and practitioners.

The authors offer best practices, as derived from the literature.

This is the first SLR for PIC in LSBP, consolidating and categorizing the PIC-LSBP characteristics. Due to few studies on the subject, this work contributes to a deeper understanding of the PICs needed for LSBP to obtain the desired performance outcomes.