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This chapter investigates productivity and cost patterns in the all-cargo US air transport sector. We empirically test the productivity growth influence of changes in unexplained technology, air operations movement characteristics, and factor input prices. Findings show productivity trends depicting negative growth for the 1993–2001 sample, then shifting measurably such that productivity trends depict positive growth for the 2002–2014 sample. The post 2001 growth was fueled by changes in unexplained technological advancements. We interpret this finding as an indication of the importance of technological innovation as a performance enhancer in this transport sector. Findings also reveal a lack of productivity change associated with changes in input prices and movement characteristics. We interpret input price findings as indicating increases in factor input prices such as wages and fuel prices are commensurate with enhanced labor and fuel productivity. The movement characteristic findings are attributable to a lack of sustained increases in load factors, stage length, network size and carrying more volume over the network (density).

This chapter provides a survey of alternative methodologies for measuring and comparing productivity and efficiency of airlines, and reviews representative empirical studies. The survey shows the apparent shift from index procedures and traditional OLS estimation of production and cost functions to stochastic frontier methods and Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) methods over the past three decades. Most of the airline productivity and efficiency studies over the last decade adopt some variant of DEA methods. Researchers in the 1980s and 1990s were mostly interested in the effects of deregulation and liberalization on airline productivity and efficiency as well as the effects of ownership and governance structure. Since the 2000s, however, studies tend to focus on how business models and management strategies affect the performance of airlines. Environmental efficiency now becomes an important area of airline productivity and efficiency studies, focusing on CO₂ emission as a negative or undesirable output. Despite the fact that quality of service is an important aspect of airline business, limited attempts have been made to incorporate quality of service in productivity and efficiency analysis.

Many corporations have annual expenditures in research and development in the range of billions of U.S. dollars. Senior managers have often been frustrated by the lack of innovation in their organizations and have been looking for better ways to implement an innovation strategy. To provide initial evidence on this significant topic, we conduct an empirical examination and contribute to the existing literature in two important areas. First, we examine how managers choose what measures to pay attention to in managing the innovation process – defined as the process of creative definition, development, and commercialization of substantially new products, services or businesses. We find that managers use measures about specific phases of the innovation process together. For example, measures that inform about the execution stage of the innovation process are grouped together rather than being grouped with measures informative about other phases of the innovation process, such as market performance. This pattern “focused” around specific phases is in contrast to the alternative “balanced” pattern where managers would use measures from various phases of the process together. This result provides the first empirical test of how managers combine measures to filter information about business processes. It also provides important new evidence on the use of measures and provides guidance to the design of measurement systems. Second, this paper provides empirical evidence on the relationship between innovation strategy and the use of measures. Though previous studies have linked innovation strategy and the use of management control systems in general, there is little empirical data on the relationship of strategy and the use of measures and on the innovation process. We find that different dimensions of strategy are positively associated with how managers use different types of measures.

Existing studies about airline productivity and cost competitiveness are focusing on combination carriers, transporting both passengers and cargo in the same aircraft and with the same inputs. Scientific research about the cost structure and productive performance of all-cargo carriers is very limited. However, the importance of air cargo and express transport in our globalized economy, the high volatility of all-cargo carriers (especially since the 2008 economic crisis), and the success of integrators show the need for more scientific attention to this industry. This chapter aims at benchmarking the productivity and cost competitiveness of US integrated and non-integrated cargo carriers, based on total factor productivity and unit cost competitiveness analyses. The results unveil a positive correlation between productivity on the one hand and the size of the carrier and its average stage length on the other hand, indicating economies of scale. Correcting the results for such factors beyond managerial control and input prices allows us to measure the impact of the crisis and the consequences for the management of the individual carriers.

In this chapter, we estimate the allocative efficiency of Spanish airports in the pre-privatization period from 2009 until 2014. The estimation of an input-oriented distance system of equations allows us to calculate different allocative efficiency measures using two approaches. The results show that allocative inefficiencies exist for Spanish airports during this period. Moreover, in breaking down allocative efficiency changes by periods coinciding with different government strategies of privatization, we find important differences. In the initial period, when the government encouraged decentralized management of airports and privatization of the largest airports, allocative efficiency improved (from 2009 to 2012). In the second period, however, when the government focused on centralized airport management and privatization of the system as a whole (from 2012 to 2014), inefficiencies slightly increased again.

This study proposes targeted modernization of the Department of Defense (DoD's) Joint Forces Ammunition Logistics information system by implementing the optimized innovative information technology open architecture design and integrating Radio Frequency Identification Device data technologies and real-time optimization and control mechanisms as the critical technology components of the solution. The innovative information technology, which pursues the focused logistics, will be deployed in 36 months at the estimated cost of $568 million in constant dollars. We estimate that the Systems, Applications, Products (SAP)-based enterprise integration solution that the Army currently pursues will cost another $1.5 billion through the year 2014; however, it is unlikely to deliver the intended technical capabilities.