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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the influence of decision-makers’ (DM) risk bearing attitudes and the effect of the decision-making environment on estimating the overall degree of agility of an organization. The present study explores an extended agility model in a specific organization's hierarchy and reflects how decision-making attitudes alter an organizational agility scenario.

The concept of fuzzy logic has been explored in this paper. Based on DMs’ linguistic judgments, a fuzzy appropriateness rating as well as fuzzy priority weights have been determined for different levels of agile system hierarchy. Using a multi-grade fuzzy approach the overall agility index has been determined. The concept of fuzzy numbers ranking has been explored to show the effect of decision-making attitudes on agility estimations.

Decision-making attributes, e.g. the category of DM (neutral, risk-averse and risk-taking), affect the quantitative evaluation of the overall agility degree, which is correlated with a predefined agility measurement scale.

This study explores a triangular fuzzy membership function to express DMs’ linguistic judgments as fuzzy representations. Apart from triangular fuzzy numbers, trapezoidal and Gaussian fuzzy numbers may also be used for agility evaluation. The model may be used in other agile industries for benchmarking and selection of the best approach.

Selecting the right decision-making group to compute and analyze the agility level for a particular organization is an important managerial decision. In the case of benchmarking of various agile enterprises the decision-making group bearing the same attitude should be utilized.

Agile system modeling and development of agility appraisement platforms have been attempted by previous researchers while the influence of DMs’ risk bearing attitudes, and the effect of the decision-making environment on estimating the overall degree of agility, have rarely been studied. In this context, the authors explore an exhaustive agility model for implementing in a case study and reveal how decision-making attitudes alter organizational agility scenarios.

Supply chains (SCs) have become increasingly vulnerable to catastrophic events/disruptions that may be natural or man-made. Hurricanes, tsunamis and floods are natural disasters, whereas man-made disasters may be strikes, terrorist attacks, etc. Failure at any point in the SC network has the potential to cause the entire network to fail. SCs must therefore be properly designed to survive well in the disruption scenario. The capability of successful survival (of the firm’s SC) against those adverse events/happenings is termed as resilience; and, the SC designed under resilience consideration is called a resilient SC. Effective supplier selection is considered as a key strategic consideration in SC management. It is felt that apart from considering traditional suppliers selection criterions, suppliers’ resiliency strategy must be incorporated while selecting a potential supplier which can provide best support to the firm even in the disaster/disruption scenario. The purpose of this paper is to focus aspects of evaluation and selection of resilience supplier by considering general as well as resiliency strategy, simultaneously.

In this work, subjectivity associated with ill-defined (vague) evaluation information has been tackled through logical exploration of fuzzy numbers set theory. Application of VIKOR embedded with fuzzy mathematics has been utilized here. Sensitivity analysis has been performed to reflect the effect of decision-makers’ (DM) risk bearing attitude in selecting the best potential supplier in a resilient SC. A case empirical example has also been presented.

The work attempts to focus on a decision-making procedural hierarchy towards effective supplier selection in a resilient SC. The work exhibits application potential of VIKOR method integrated with fuzzy set theory to select potential supplier based on general strategy as well as resiliency strategy. The final supplier selection score (obtained by considering general strategy) and that of obtained by analyzing resiliency strategy have been combined to get a final compromise solution. The decision-support framework thus reported here also considers DMs’ risk bearing attitude.

The study bears significant impact to the industry managers who are trying to adapt resiliency strategy in their SC followed by potential supplier selection in the context of resilient SC.

Exploration of VIKOR embedded with fuzzy set theory towards suppliers’ evaluation and selection by considering general and resiliency criteria both. The decision-support module(s) adapted in this paper considers DMs’ risk bearing attitude to arrive the best compromise solution.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a decision‐making procedural hierarchy for evaluation as well as selection of third‐party reverse logistics provider (3PL) under fuzzy environment.

Due to uncertainty, vagueness arising from decision makers (DM) subjective judgment towards intangible (qualitative) selection criteria, fuzzy logic has been utilized to facilitate such a decision‐making process for 3PL evaluation and selection.

Evaluating and selecting 3PL providers can be regarded as a multi‐criteria decision making (MCDM) process in which a decision maker chooses, under several selection criteria, the best suited alternative. The present study highlights a case study on evaluation and selection of 3PL service providers for a reputed Indian automobile part manufacturing company. The fuzzy based decision‐making tool applied here has been proved fruitful for its effectiveness.

There are many research issues remaining in the development of this approach. First, the definition of appropriate fuzzy linguistic variables, corresponding membership functions (MFs) and their numbers, and their universe of discourse for a general use in the algorithm. Second, a methodology for accumulating raw data and analyzing the appropriate MFs for the base linguistic variables. Third, the relative importance of every decision maker, the decision‐making environment and structure may affect the decision‐making process. These have been assumed negligible in this study.

The main contributions of this research are: first, an integrated criteria list (followed by sets of sub‐criteria) has been modeled for service quality evaluation and appraisement of 3PL providers. Each sub criteria set has been structured to be preceded by a main criteria. Second, priority weights of various main criteria as well as sub‐criteria; extent of successful performance (rating) of different sub‐criteria have been expressed in fuzzy numbers. It facilitates in accumulating DMs subjective judgments into a unique numerical evaluation score. Third, decision makers risk‐bearing attitude has been estimated and utilized in computing overall evaluation index for alternative candidates. The decision‐making framework presented here can be extended to solve any decision‐making problem designed under a complex and interconnected set of primary criteria followed by sub‐criteria or more extended elaborate criteria hierarchy.

Each individual investor is different, with different financial goals, levels of risk tolerance and personal preferences. From the point of view of investment management, these characteristics are often defined as objectives and constraints. Objectives can be the type of return being sought, while constraints include factors such as time horizon, how liquid the investor is, any personal tax situation and how risk is handled. It is really a balancing act between risk and return with each investor having unique requirements, as well as a unique financial outlook – essentially a constrained utility maximization objective. To analyze how well a customer fits into a particular investor class, one investment house has even designed a structured questionnaire with about 24 questions that each has to be answered with values from 1 to 5. The questions range from personal background to what the customer expects from an investment. A fuzzy logic system has been designed for the evaluation of the answers to the above questions. The notion of fuzziness with respect to funds allocation is investigated.

Risk analysis plays a vital role in controlling and managing cost overruns in complex construction projects, particularly where uncertainty is high. This study attempts to address an important issue of cost overrun that encountered by metropolitan rapid transit projects in relation to the significance of risk involved under high uncertainty.

In order to solve cost overrun problems in metropolitan transit projects and facilitate the decision-makers for effective future budgeting, a cost-risk contingency framework has been designed using fuzzy logic, analytical hierarchy process and Monte Carlo simulation.

Initially, a hierarchical breakdown structure of important complexity-driven risk factors has been conceptualized herein using relative importance index. Later, a proposed cost-risk contingency framework has investigated the expected total construction cost in order to consider the additional budgeted cost required to mitigate the risk consequences for particular project activity. The results of cost-risk analysis imply that poor design issues, an increase in material prices and delays in relocating facilities show higher dependency and increase the risk of cost overrun in metropolitan transit projects.

The findings and implication for project managers could possibly be achieved by assuming the proposed cost-risk contingency framework under high uncertainty of cost found in this research. Furthermore, this procedure may be used by experts from other engineering domains by replacing and considering the complex relationship between complexity-risk factors.

This study contributes to the body of knowledge by providing a practical contingency model to identify and evaluate the additional risk cost required to compute total construction cost for getting stability in future budgeting.

Robot selection is basically a task of choosing appropriate robot among available alternatives with respect to some evaluation criteria. The task becomes much more complicated since apart from objective criteria a number of subjective criteria need to be evaluated simultaneously. Plenty of decision support systems have been well documented in existing literature which considers either objective or subjective data set; however, decision support module with simultaneous consideration of objective as well as subjective data has rarely been attempted before. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Motivated by this, present work exhibits application potential of preference ranking organization method for enrichment evaluations (extended to operate under fuzzy environment) to solve decision-making problems which encounter both objective as well as subjective evaluation data.

An empirical case study has been demonstrated in the context of robot selection problem. Finally, a sensitivity analysis has been performed to make the robot selection process more robust. A trade-off between objective criteria measure and subjective criteria measure has been shown using sensitivity analysis.

Robot selection has long been viewed as an important decision-making scenario in the industrial context. Appropriate robot selection helps in enhancing value of the product and thereby, results in increased profitability for the manufacturing industries. The proposed decision support system considering simultaneous exploration of subjective as well as objective database is rarely attempted before.

Investigation of family firm radical innovation is burgeoning but far less prevalent than studies of family firm innovation in general. Concurrently, studies repeatedly report that family firms exhibit mostly conservative and incremental innovation rather than more radical ones. This is unfortunate because without radical innovation, family firms risk a competency trap in which long-term competitiveness is lost to more innovative rivals. This situation has led to urgent calls among scholars to explicitly acknowledge the heterogeneity of family firm innovation and to understand the conditions for family firm radical innovation.

A systematic review of 51 papers categorized into four scholarly conversations build the foundation for a critical discussion of each line of inquiry.

The authors analyze 51 leading articles and identify four persistent theoretical positions: (1) RBV and capabilities, (2) agency and stewardship, (3) behavioral agency and socioemotional wealth, and (4) the ability and willingness paradox. The authors identify key research problems and research questions needing urgent scholarly and present a framework that captures their complementary and competing assumptions to enable rigorous future research.

To galvanize and spearhead future research efforts, this paper provides a critical analysis of our understanding of family firm radical innovation with a specific emphasis on the theoretical assumptions at the core of existing investigations and the eight most important research questions in need of answers.

This paper aims to investigate the effect of global financial market uncertainty on the relation between risk and return in G7 stock markets.

Market uncertainty is quantified using a probability-based measure derived from a regime-switching model in which the state transition probabilities are time-varying in response to leading economic indicators. Time variation in the risk return relation is estimated using a GARCH-M model.

While the regime-switching model successfully distinguishes between crisis and normal states, there remains substantial variability through time in the level of uncertainty about which state prevails. Results show that a strong negative relation exists between this uncertainty and the reward-to-variability ratio across all G7 stock markets. This finding is qualitatively consistent at both monthly and weekly horizons.

Extant evidence on the risk-return relation is conflicting. Most papers assume the relation is time constant. Allowing the reward-to-variability ratio to vary through time in response to return regime uncertainty increases the understanding of asset pricing. It also has important implications for asset allocation decisions by investors.

Planned episodic change programs, rigid processes and traditional structures, optimized for efficiency rather than agility, are no longer appropriate in a context where competitive advantage is fueled by high-speed innovation, supported by a more entrepreneurial mindset. The purpose of this paper is to offer a review of relevant research to provide an informed case for continuous strategic transformation facilitated by enhanced organizational agility. The concept of agility is explored, defined and a framework for categorizing agility-enhancing capabilities is presented. Specific aspects of this agility framework are examined to better understand how these interrelated competencies contribute to overall corporate performance in this fast-paced world.

A range of published empirical and practitioner research articles were reviewed to study the concepts of organizational agility and transformation as critical factors contributing to sustained competitive advantage, organizational performance and survival in the increasingly competitive global context. This literature review explores how organizations are overcoming the challenges imposed by their traditional structures, cultures and leadership models and identifies dynamic competencies to be developed to achieve a greater level of corporate agility.

Increased organizational agility increases the ability to respond proactively to unexpected environmental changes. The commitment to continuous transformation and agile strategies implies changes at all levels of the organization from its structure, through its leadership and decision-making dynamics, down to the skills and interpersonal relationships of the individuals implementing the agile mission.

There is a gap in the literature with respect to agility, namely that most research focuses on the characteristics of agile organizations, with little attention given to how to develop agile capabilities and embed the commitment to continuous change deep into the corporate DNA, beyond the process level, into the psyche of the people driving the organization.

Managers should consider agility as an overarching principle guiding strategic and operational activities. Fostering agility-enhancing capabilities will be paramount in ensuring the successful integration of agility as a performance enhancing paradigm.

For small- and medium-sized companies with limited resources, this reality makes staying relevant an uphill battle but also opens windows of opportunity. The challenge of the next century for large organizations will be to rekindle their innovative agile beginnings and for start-ups to continue to foster their dynamic capabilities as they grow.

The paper provides practical and empirical evidence of the importance of enterprise agility and specific dynamic capabilities on firm performance.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a multi-level hierarchical framework (evaluation index system) toward evaluating an “appraisement index” from the prospectus of measuring and monitoring resilient performance of the candidate industry.

In this reporting, vagueness, imprecision, as well as inconsistency associated with subjective evaluation information (aligned with ill-defined assessment indices of SC resilience performance), has been tackled by the application of fuzzy theory.

Subjective evaluation information (expressed in linguistic term) acquired from the committee of decision makers (called expert group), against different resilience indices/metrics, has been fruitfully explored through the proposed fuzzy-based resilience performance appraisement module. Finally, a case study from an Indian automobile company has been conducted from the perspective of checking effectiveness of the proposed methodology for evaluation of appraisement index indicating SC resilience extent.

This methodology might be successfully applied to help other decision-making problems from the perspective of performance appraisal and benchmarking of candidate alternatives/choices under predefined criteria and subjective evaluation circumstances.