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Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are expected to be more creative and innovative to survive in the business competition and to make their businesses environmentally friendly, to develop global supply chain strategies, and to make innovations in products and business processes to become indispensable. This study discusses the effect of green supply chain integration (GSCI) and environmental uncertainty on performance through the moderation of green innovation. Structural equation modeling and maximum likelihood estimation were used to analyze a sample of 130 SMEs in East Java, Indonesia. The result shows that GSCI and environmental uncertainty significantly affect performance, and green innovation significantly moderates the effect. This research found that SME’s performance is influenced by GSCI concept and green innovation application as well as SME’s understanding about recent and future environmental uncertainties; this fits the market demand.

Multinational firms will engage in operational hedging only when both exchange rate uncertainty and demand uncertainty are present. Operational hedging is less important for managing short-term exposures, since demand uncertainty is lower in the short term. Operational hedging is also less important for commodity-based firms, which face price but not quantity uncertainty. For firms with plants in both a domestic and foreign location, the foreign currency cash flow generally will not be independent of the exchange rate. Consequently the optimal financial hedging policy cannot be implemented with forward contracts alone but can be implemented using foreign currency call and put options, and forward contracts.

This article classifies empirical research on vertical integration under four approaches – value-added-to-sales, qualitative–quantitative, input–output, and microanalytic. The emphasis here is on the microanalytic approach which has accumulated the most systematic evidence to support its theoretical propositions. In particular, this article emphasizes theoretical and empirical contributions from organizational economics (especially transaction costs and agency theories) for both vertical integration and (vertical) contracting. Limitations and methodological challenges concerning the empirical testing of theories of vertical integration are addressed and suggestions for further research are provided.

The newsvendor problem is fundamental to many operations management models. The problem focuses on the trade-off between the gains from satisfying demand and losses from unsold products. The newsvendor model and its extensions have been applied to various areas, such as production plan and supply chain management. This chapter examines the study about newsvendor problem. In this research, there is a review of the contributions for the multiproduct newsvendor problem. It focuses on the current literature concerning the mathematical models and the solution methods for the multiitem newsvendor problems with single or multiple constraints, as well as with the risks. The objective of this research is to go over the newsvendor problem and bring into comparison different newsvendor models applied to the flower industry. A few case studies are described addressing topics related to the newsvendor problem such as discounting and replenishment policies, inventory inaccuracies, or demand estimation. Three newsvendor models are put into practice in the field of flower selling. A full database of the flowers sold by an anonymous retailer is available for the study. Computational experiments for practical example have been conducted with use of the CPLEX solver with AMPL programming language. Models are solved, and an analysis of different circumstances and cases is accomplished.

Perspective-taking is a social competency to consider the world from other viewpoints (Galinsky, Maddux, Gilin, & White, 2008); it “allows an individual to anticipate the behavior and reactions of others” (Davis, 1983, p. 115) and helps to balance attention between self- and other-interests (Galinsky et al., 2008). Though often used interchangeably with the term empathy – “an other-focused emotional response that allows one person to affectively connect with another” (Galinsky et al., 2008, p. 378), clear evidence exists that demonstrates that the two concepts are distinct (Coke, Batson, & McDavis, 1978; Davis, 1983; Deutch & Madle, 1975; Hoffman, 1977; Oswald, 1996). Although both concepts refer to a social competency of taking another's perspective, empathy tends to be more affective while perspective taking leans toward the cognitive (Galinsky et al., 2008). For example, perspective taking is associated with personality characteristics such as high self-esteem and low neuroticism as opposed to emotionality (Davis, 1983). Perspective-takers are more capable of stepping outside the constraints of their own immediate, biased frames of reference (Moore, 2005) to reduce egocentric perceptions of fairness in competitive contexts (without it being at the expense of their own self-interest; Epley, Caruso, & Bazerman, 2006). Perspective taking has also been shown to be a more valuable strategy than empathy in strategic interactions because it helps negotiators find the necessary balance between competition and cooperation, between self- and other-interest (Galinsky et al., 2008). Achieving such a balance facilitates creative problem-solving (Pruitt & Rubin, 1986). For instance, in negotiation, a focus only on self-interests is associated with excessive aggression and obstinacy whereas a focus only on other-interests encourages excessive concession making to the detriment of one's own outcomes (Galinsky et al., 2008). In contrast, perspective takers have the capacity to uncover underlying interests to generate creative solutions when an obvious deal is not possible (Galinsky et al., 2008). Consequently, the cognitive appreciation of another person's interests is capable of facilitating economically efficient outcomes by acting as a discovery heuristic that reveals hidden problems or solutions and as a tool that enables individuals to capture more value for themselves (Galinsky et al., 2008).

Demand forecasting has long been an imperative tenet in production planning especially in a make-to-order environment where a typical manufacturer has to balance the issues of holding excessive safety stocks and experiencing possible stockout. Many studies provide pragmatic paradigms to generate demand forecasts (mainly based on smoothing forecasting models.) At the same time, artificial neural networks (ANNs) have been emerging as alternatives. In this chapter, we propose a two-stage forecasting approach, which combines the strengths of a neural network with a more conventional exponential smoothing model. In the first stage of this approach, a smoothing model estimates the series of demand forecasts. In the second stage, general regression neural network (GRNN) is applied to learn and then correct the errors of estimates. Our empirical study evaluates the use of different static and dynamic smoothing models and calibrates their synergies with GRNN. Various statistical tests are performed to compare the performances of the two-stage models (with error correction by neural network) and those of the original single-stage models (without error-correction by neural network). Comparisons with the single-stage GRNN are also included. Statistical results show that neural network correction leads to improvements to the forecasts made by all examined smoothing models and can outperform the single-stage GRNN in most cases. Relative performances at different levels of demand lumpiness are also examined.

This study provides evidence on the importance of operational hedges in foreign-exchange risk management, an issue that has been largely ignored in the literature. One possible reason for the absence of empirical evidence in the literature may be related to the difficulty in devising the appropriate measures of a firm's ability to construct operating hedges. We utilize measures of the structure of an MNC's foreign subsidiary network as proxies of the firm's ability to devise operational hedges and examine their relationship to exposure coefficients computed prior to and during the 1997–1998 Asian currency crisis. Our results show that the mean exposure during the Asian crisis period was significantly higher than the pre-crisis period. In addition, the mean of the absolute change in the exposure of MNCs that only operate in the Asian crisis region was significantly higher than that of MNCs without operations in the crisis region. We find a strong relationship between our proxies for ability to construct operating hedges and exchange-rate exposure measures both prior to the crisis and during the crisis. An even stronger association between exposure and measures of the MNC network structure is found for the sub-sample of MNCs that have some operations in the Asian crisis region. Similar results are obtained when the relationship is examined separately for “net importers” (MNCs with positive exposures) and “net exporters” (MNCs with negative exposures). Overall, our results are consistent with the notion that operational hedges significantly reduce a firm's exposure to foreign-exchange risk.