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The purpose of this paper is to examine US equity traders’ use of market orders versus price contingent orders with respect to information content.

Price changes following market and price contingent order submissions are analysed.

It is found that prices rise (decline) after the submission of market buy (sell) orders; whereas, prices decline (rise) after the submission of price contingent buy (sell) orders. Aggressively priced limit orders (i.e. marketable limit orders) convey information, but they are not more informative than market orders. Traders who transact in smaller quantities, engage in more short‐selling, and frequently achieve better performance are more likely to use market orders.

In contrast to prior studies, the paper's findings suggest that, when executing orders, informed traders have a preference for bearing a price rather than an execution risk.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a mathematical model of a make-to-order manufacturing company simultaneously negotiating multiple contingent orders that possess conflicting issues in order to achieve order acceptance decisions (OADs).

The paper developed a mathematical model by incorporating probabilistic theory and some theories of negotiation in the OAD problem. The model helps to harness the relationship between the manufacturer and customers of contingent orders on conflicting issues. A numerical example is enumerated to illustrate the working mechanism and sensitivity of the model developed.

In the negotiation-based OAD system, if more than one customer is willing to negotiate on the offer of manufacturer, rather than engaging in one-to-one negotiation, the manufacturer has to negotiate with all the customers simultaneously to maximize the expected contribution and acceptance probability from all the orders. Also, the numerical example illustrates that, sometimes, rejecting an order/orders from the order set gives better results in terms of the expected contribution than continuing negotiations on them.

Through continuing research efforts in this domain, certain models and strategies have been developed for negotiation on a one-to-one basis (i.e. negotiation by the manufacture with only one customer at a time). One-to-one negotiation will neither help companies to streamline their production systems nor will it maximize the expected contribution. To the best of the author’s knowledge, so far, this is the first instance of research work in the domain of a joint OAD and negotiation framework that attempts to develop a simultaneous negotiation method for arriving at OADs.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a smart spare parts inventory management system for a semiconductor manufacturing company.

With the development of the Internet of Things and big data analytics, more information can be obtained and shared between fabs and suppliers.

On the basis of the characteristics of spare parts, the authors classify the spare parts into two types, the consumable and contingent parts, and manage them through a cyber-physical inventory management system.

In this new business model, the real time information from machines, shop floors, spare parts database and suppliers are used to make better decisions and establish transparency and flexibility between fabs and suppliers.

The purpose of this paper is to solve an integration of customer and supplier flexibility problem in a make-to-order (MTO) industry. The flexible strategies, where delivery leadtime and unit price (or raw material cost) can be negotiated, are provided by customers and suppliers. Its effectiveness is illustrated by a practical application.

The present study is a rolling decision-making problem and is solved by a proposed combined mixed integer program (MIP) and simulation approach. A simulation model was developed for evaluating solutions of the MIP and will serve as the virtual factory to provide the initial work-in-process status for a new incoming order evaluation.

The experimental results show that when either customers or suppliers provide flexible strategies to the manufacturer, total profits can be increased. Moreover, when both customers and suppliers provide flexibility strategies to the manufacturer simultaneously, total profits can be significantly increased.

An expanded experiment would be of help in realizing the relationship between the flexibility and profit. Moreover, there are other price-sensitivity functions for both customers and suppliers.

A fishing-net manufacturing company was used for the case study to illustrate the effectiveness and the feasibility of the proposed methodology and its application to industry.

The proposed methodology innovatively solved a practical application. The customer and supplier flexibility was investigated in a MTO production system that has no inventory of raw material. The experimental results are promising.

The customer enquiry management (CEM) process is of strategic importance in engineer‐to‐order contexts but existing literature does not adequately describe how firms support delivery date setting and order acceptance decisions in practice. This paper seeks to explore how and why the CEM process varies between companies in the capital goods sector, thereby taking a contingency theory approach.

Multi‐case study research involving 18 Italian capital goods manufacturers in four industrial sectors. Face‐to‐face interviews with senior representatives have been conducted. Companies have been grouped into five clusters, based on similarities in their CEM decision‐making modes, to aid analysis.

Three contingency factors were found to be particularly relevant in determining CEM modes: degree of product customization, flexibility of the production system, and uncertainty of the context. These factors affect the choice of specific CEM decision‐making modes. However, a high level of cross‐functional coordination and formalization of the process were found to constitute best practices whatever the contingency factors.

The research focuses on companies belonging to the Italian capital goods sector – findings may differ in other countries and sectors.

The results indicate that all firms, including small and medium‐sized companies, should implement high levels of cross‐functional coordination and formalization in their CEM practices, in order to improve their performance. For other aspects of the CEM process, including supplier and subcontractor monitoring, the company context will indicate whether these aspects are required, according to a need of matching the approach to CEM with specific sets of contingency factors.

This paper provides a rare insight into the CEM processes found in practice.

This paper aims to examine the validity of contingent reward and its relationship to extra effort and to further advance understanding of the leader/follower performance reward relationship.

The concept of contingent reward has largely remained unchanged since 1985. Consequently, the items of contingent reward were examined in terms of their content validity that was guided by transactional leadership theory, re‐formulated path‐goal theory of leadership, and negotiation theory. Three new contingent reward factors were identified (i.e. framing, clarifying, and rewarding). These were examined using one‐factor congeneric measurement models. Valid factors were identified using a high‐order confirmatory factor analysis to further confirm the structural validity of the three new factors of contingent reward. Finally, structural equation models were calculated to examine the relationships among contingent reward factors and extra effort.

Three distinct factors of contingent reward were identified and their relationships with extra effort was consistent with the integrative negotiation strategies where each factor formed part of a negotiation process. Contingent reward (framing) initiates the negotiation process and directly loads on contingent reward (rewarding and clarifying); contingent reward (framing) did not directly load on to extra effort. Contingent reward (rewarding) supports the negotiation process by loading directly on contingent reward (clarifying). The negotiation process is completed with contingent reward (clarifying) directly loading on extra effort. These three contingent reward factors form a simple negotiation process that highlights several important aspect of the leader/follower reward performance relationship.

This study uses a cross‐sectional design that means that its findings may not be generalisable to other populations. However, the findings of this study should encourage researchers to appreciate that common leadership behaviour, like contingent reward, may have more complex interrelationships with outcome factors such as extra effort than previously expected.

Leaders should view their use of contingent reward behaviours in terms of a process rather than simply exhibiting a single clarifying contingent reward type behaviour. In other words, leaders need to establish the boundaries (i.e. framing), acknowledge involvement (i.e. rewarding), and then elucidate mutual outcomes (i.e. clarifying). This process should enable leaders to negotiate greater flexibilities and create more momentum within their leader/follower performance reward relationships.

This paper challenges the foundation ideas and empirical pedigree of contingent reward and incorporates advances in theories such as the reformulated path‐goal theory and interpret the behaviours in a broader multi‐disciplinary context, i.e. integrative negotiation strategies.

Although the organizational practice of using “contingent or non-traditional workers” has been escalating since the mid-1980s, only recently has research begun to focus on the consequences of this practice. In unionized workplaces, labor leaders have begun to organize these workers. Although it is believed that contingent workers are responding positively to union organizing drives, little is known about the attitudes and behaviors of contingent workers as union members. Using the Union Commitment scale developed by Gordon, Philpot, Burt, Thompson and Spiller (1980), the research project reported here compares the Union Commitment of traditional faculty and three categories of adjunct faculty. The results reveal that there are no significant differences across these employee groups for the factors of Union Loyalty, Responsibility to the Union, Willingness to Work for the Union and Alienation from the Union. The implications of these findings for research and practice are discussed.

We present two contingency rules to control a production process subject to a single assignable cause, i.e. the process shifts from in‐control to out‐of‐control state when the single assignable cause occurs. In this paper, we assume a 100 per cent inspection policy as opposed to the sampling concept. However, the first rule we suggest is comparable with the traditional sampling model in that its criterion to intervene in the process is based on the number of defective products. The second rule uses more information than the first does: it triggers intervening in the process when the inter‐arrival time between two consecutive defective products is smaller than an optimally derived cut‐off rate. We first show how the two rules can be derived, and, as a preliminary analysis, propose conditions under which one contingency rule might be more effective than the other.

A large amount of research deals with the identification of management practices related to new product development (NPD) success. To this purpose, assessment tools capable of helping enterprises to set up improvement processes are of extreme importance. The aim of this paper is to build a product development assessment model based upon a normative‐contingent approach.

First, a literature review of the main approaches and models used in NPD assessment was carried out. Second, the tool was tested in five firms. The case studies allowed the authors to test the tool in its prototypal phase in order to assess both its limits and potential and also to highlight possible improvements.

The assessment tool developed yields a clear understanding of the current state of product development process in an organization in order to facilitate a shared understanding of the weakness and deficiencies, to enable effective process management, to develop implementation plan to support change initiatives and to support process improvement using metrics.

The product development assessment model is based upon a normative‐contingent approach meaning that the prescriptive requirements are defined according to the logic of coherence: requirements vary in relation to contextual conditions. In particular, there are two important context factors which are considered to have a significant influence on NPD process: the complexity of the product‐market interface and the enterprise's NPD strategic orientations.

Žižek has become both one of the dominant voices in current leftist cultural, social, and political critique and one of the most maligned. His work can be obscure, difficult to understand, and at times hyperbolic. Of particular difficulty is the attempt to discern a “positive” project in his work, as it seems that he is very good at offering us a sustained discussion of the difficulties of finding an oppositional stance to what he describes as our “current situation.” In fact, he is so good at this, that if we take him seriously it becomes hard to see a way out. Despite such appearances, Žižek's work offers us a radical insight into the twin processes of the creation of the social and the creation of the subject (and their mutual interdependence) as well as a novel conception of the possibility of resistance and social change based on this process. Furthermore, we can best make sense of this theory of resistance as founded in what Žižek identifies as the “negative” moment. This moment brings with it the possibility of something which is not determined by the existing power structure, thus it brings with it the possibility of a universalist stance that is unconditioned by our “current situation.” It is not then, as some have argued, that Žižek's privileging of the negative moment leads to a theory of social change that cannot sustain a positive project, nor is it the case that Žižek's theory of the negative serves as the first move upon which a positive project can be built. Žižek's radical insight is that the negative moment can itself be a positive phenomenon. The proper negative act then is one which lays the foundation for social change by creating a radical form of subjectivity that serves as the basis for such change. In trying to explicate Žižek's claims, what he is suggesting can be best understood by reference to Žižek's Lacanian reading of Hegel's theory of subjective freedom: freedom arising in the necessity that first defines (and confines) the subject.