Search results

The purpose of this paper is to provide a conceptual and historical overview of the evolution of outsourcing. The authors then focus and prognosticate on the future of outsourcing and develop several compelling ideas based on extant insights and the rule of three axioms.

The insights are developed based on a review of the extant literature and evolution of trends.

The paper generates several insights. First, there is a need to carefully differentiate between core and non-core functions when deciding on whether/what to outsource. Some outsourcing options may boost financial performance in the short run but undermine the long-term viability of the firm. Public firms outsource more than private firms after controlling for size. In many cases, the optimal number of primary suppliers for a critical function/process/stock keeping unit (SKU) is three (while also allowing for a number of secondary suppliers). The optimal share distribution between the suppliers for the same SKU is rank ordinal (i.e. not equal). The complexity and the maturity of the supply chain as well as industry life cycle, regulation and technology influence the optimal number of primary suppliers.

The insights have significant implications for outsourcing decisions and for improving their impact on firm performance. The emergence of the shared economy, subscription-based business models and crowdsourcing will lead to consumers, business and society that increasingly borrows rather than one that makes or buys.

The paper represents the first attempt to integrate the axioms of the rule of three with the outsourcing literature and the theory of the firm. It emphasizes the need to align (long-term) performance objectives with managerial incentives as businesses manage their outsourcing efforts.

In this paper, the management of variety in automobile manufacturing is broadened from simply considering the choice of models, options and parts to include strategic issues in sourcing and logistics systems. Some of the major cost elements associated with varietal increase are identified, leading into a discussion of how logistics system redesign can reduce or, indeed, eliminate the unwanted impacts of varietal increase. In this context, a “Rule of Three” is developed to assist in the effective management of variety in automotive logistics and elsewhere.

Delivering performance is the primary accountability of the board. To perform boards need to integrate strategic thinking with strategic planning and strategic execution. Directors need to ensure, for successful roll out of their strategy, that the enterprise has the relevant decision‐making structures and skill sets needed for implementation and pertinent communication systems for the timely and complete execution of the activities required to achieve the objectives that derive from the strategy. Most enterprises do each of the three independent of the other and spend much time and energy attempting to bring the disparate, disconnected and often conflicting pieces together. The paper aims to outline a tested method for integrating the three elements by design and to demonstrate, in practical terms, the benefits that accrue. It outlines a strategic approach to development and deployment of strategy. It further outlines a framework to cascade the thinking, planning and execution down to the levels that deliver.

The concept of a performing board, as distinct from a board focused on compliance, is clarified. The paper develops a nested set of rules – three rules of three. The first set of three integrates performance, conformance and compliance, all three of which are central and required for effective governance; the aim is to provide a structure to guide the thinking processes, at the board level, so essential for the development of strategy aimed at execution. The second rule of three is designed to ensure effective deployment of strategy, which is viewed as the core index of board performance. It comprises and combines strategy with structure and structure with systems to facilitate the planning for execution by the directors. This approach helps crystallize the key result areas of strategic outcomes desired. Policy, people and process combine to form the third set of three and are aimed at efficient implementation of the outcomes derived from the thinking and planning process. All three in this set are derived from the second set of three. The paper discusses how these three rules feed into and off each other and the benefits of a structured, replicable process for development, deployment and implementation of strategy.

This article leverages the finding of the author that directors seldom, if ever, see their roles as overseers of enterprise performance. The usual tick box approach to ensure that statutory and regulatory corporate governance reports are filed in time has failed to deliver the revised expectations of directors. Many rules and regulations have been added to improve board accountability since the last decade of the twentieth century. Yet most boards continue to under‐perform. The integrated approach, while demanding, ensures that directors can oversee a well governed, proactively directed and well managed enterprise without having to micro manage the firm.

Many of the concepts and terms used are industry standard and referred to frequently in governance literature. The originality is set in enunciating the concept of performance governance, differentiating it from compliance and conformance and detailing its implications for directors in full. The value is embedded in the structured expose of the various relationships which enables real time real world execution.

The strategic thinking behind numerous M&As is: “bigger is more important than better”. Such logic is also followed in the growth strategies of many players who believe that increasing scale via M&As will bring sustainable competitive advantage and generate above‐average financial performance and value creation for their shareholders. But numerous failed M&As and the modest financial performance of many large players compared to smaller ones question the universality of this logic. The aim of this article is to emphasize how important it is in strategic decision‐making to correctly understand and interpret contemporary concepts such as scale‐based completion, industry consolidation, and M&As.

The discussion is guided by three leading questions which need to be answered in any strategy formulation process: does scale matter, and where? What are the implications of industry concentration? What should be the strategic logic behind M&As? These questions are addressed according to the key assumptions and premises of the merger and industry consolidation theory and the Rule of Three concept, and the discussion is enriched by several cases and examples from various industries.

Scale does not necessarily bring competitive advantage, improve financial performance, or generate scale‐related synergies per se. To develop sustainable competitive advantage, executives must understand the true nature and mechanisms which drive the industry concentration process, value creation through M&As and the consequent advantages of increasing company scale.

The article discloses key strategic elements to be considered when formulating effective corporate strategies in a complex business environment and a context of rapidly concentrating industries. The discussion also raises awareness regarding the importance of strategic logic, correct interpretation of strategic concepts and sensitivity toward differences in industries in avoiding false conclusions and poorly‐formulated strategies.

The purpose of this pitch research letter (PRL) is to apply the pitching template developed by Faff (2015) to an academic project on boardroom gender diversity and default risk.

The pitching template helps the pitcher to identify the core elements that form the framework of the research project. The PRL encloses a brief background about the pitcher and pitch, followed by a brief commentary on the pitch and personal reflections of the pitcher on the pitch exercise itself.

One of the best aspects of the pitching template is that it forced the researchers to think each item over and over, enabling a synthesis of scattered ideas in a systematic way. Hence, it is strongly recommend learning and applying the pitching template as a tool to refine embryonic research ideas and to track the progress on the research projects.

This PRL is novel as it highlights the worth of performing the pitching exercise (i.e. quality publication), potential adoptability challenge and solutions (i.e. unfamiliarity and training), systematic process of learning the pitching template and application of the “rule of three” in pitching research. Such reflections are believed to be useful for early career researchers (ECRs).

The purpose of this paper is to propose a dynamic multi-attribute decision-making method based on the prospect theory for dealing with the dynamic multi-attribute decision-making problem with three-parameter interval grey number.

First, the kernel and comparison rule of three-parameter interval grey numbers are defined, which are the basis of collecting and sorting grey numbers. Next, the prospect value function is determined in view of the decision-making information with different time points as the reference points. Then, an optimal model for solving the attribute weight and time weight is constructed based on the grey entropy principle.

The paper provides a dynamic grey interrelation decision method based on the prospect theory with three-parameter interval grey number, and the example analysis shows that the method proposed in this paper has validity and rationality.

If we have a better understanding of the weights of different reference points, it is possible to receive a more reasonable expression for the comprehensive prospect utility value function.

The paper provides a grey interrelation decision method based on the prospect theory, which can help the decision maker deal with the dynamic multi-attribute decision-making problems under the uncertain environment.

The paper proposes the kernel and ranking method of three-parameter interval grey number, and uses different time points as the reference points to define the prospect value function. Furthermore, this paper structures a dynamic grey interrelation decision method with three-parameter interval grey number based on the prospect theory.

To introduce and analyze recent amendments to the rules of three US securities exchanges to add specific continued listing standards applicable to exchange-traded funds (ETFs).

Provides an introduction and summary overview of the topic, summarizes the scope of the rule changes, discusses the industry reaction to the proposed rule changes and the regulator’s response, notes the applicability of the rule changes to ETFs relying on their own fund-specific regulatory relief, and identifies compliance dates.

Each of three US securities exchanges filed separate proposals to amend their listing standards to add specific continued listing standards for ETFs. Notwithstanding various concerns expressed in comment letters from key industry participants, by March 2017 the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) approved all three proposals in substantially the form proposed.

ETF sponsors should note that significant compliance enhancements may be required to ensure proper and continuous testing of securities in an ETF’s underlying index and/or portfolio in lieu of testing for compliance solely at the time of initial listing or at the time of an investment decision. The rule changes are scheduled to take effect by October 1, 2017.

Practical analysis from a premier financial services law firm on the issues presented by the ETF rule changes.

The objective of this paper is to develop a condition-based maintenance (CBM) scheme for pneumatic cylinders. The CBM scheme will detect two common types of air leaking failure modes and identify the leaky/faulty cylinder. The successful implementation of the proposed scheme will reduce energy consumption, scrap and rework, and time to repair.

Effective implementation of maintenance is important to reduce operation cost, improve productivity and enhance quality performance at the same time. Condition-based monitoring is an effective maintenance scheme where maintenance is triggered based on the condition of the equipment monitored either real time or at certain intervals. Pneumatic air systems are commonly used in many industries for packaging, sorting and powering air tools among others. A common failure mode of pneumatic cylinders is air leaks which is difficult to detect for complex systems with many connections. The proposed method consists of monitoring the stroke speed profile of the piston inside the pneumatic cylinder using hall effect sensors. Statistical features are extracted from the speed profiles and used to develop a fault detection machine learning model. The proposed method is demonstrated using a real-life case of tea packaging machines.

Based on the limited data collected, the ensemble machine learning algorithm resulted in 88.4% accuracy. The algorithm can detect failures as soon as they occur based on majority vote rule of three machine learning models.

Early air leak detection will improve quality of packaged tea bags and provide annual savings due to time to repair and energy waste reduction. The average annual estimated savings due to the implementation of the new CBM method is $229,200 with a payback period of less than two years.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first in terms of proposing a CBM for pneumatic systems air leaks using piston speed. Majority, if not all, current detection methods rely on expensive equipment such as infrared or ultrasonic sensors. This paper also contributes to the research gap of economic justification of using CBM.

The coal-fired power plants have been confronted with new operation challenge since the unified carbon trading market was launched in China. To make the optimal decision for the carbon emissions and power production has already been an important subject for the plants. Most of the previous studies only considered the market prices of electricity and coal to optimize the generation plan. However, with the opening of the carbon trading market, carbon emission has become a restrictive factor for power generation. By introducing the carbon-reduction target in the production decision, this study aims to achieve both the environmental and economic benefits for the coal-fired power plants to positively deal with the operational pressure.

A dynamic optimization approach with both long- and short-term decisions was proposed in this study to control the carbon emissions and power production. First, the operation rules of carbon, electricity and coal markets are analyzed, and a two-step decision-making algorithm for annual and weekly production is presented. Second, a production profit model based on engineering constraints is established, and a greedy heuristics algorithm is applied in the Gurobi solver to obtain the amounts of weekly carbon emission, power generation and coal purchasing. Finally, an example analysis is carried out with five generators of a coal-fired power plant for illustration.

The results show that the joint information of the multiple markets of carbon, electricity and coal determines the real profitability of power production, which can assist the plants to optimize their production and increase the profits. The case analyses demonstrate that the carbon emission is reduced by 2.89% according to the authors’ method, while the annual profit is improved by 1.55%.

As an important power producer and high carbon emitter, coal-fired power plants should actively participate in the carbon market. Rather than trade blindly at the end of the agreement period, they should deeply associate the prices of carbon, electricity and coal together and realize optimal management of carbon emission and production decision efficiently.

This paper offers an effective method for the coal-fired power plant, which is struggling to survive, to manage its carbon emission and power production optimally.

The main theme of this special volume is the colonial state and its governmental practices. This chapter introduces and contextualizes the contributions by providing a brief induction to recent developments within the study of the colonial state. It then presents the contributions under three perspectives which represent separate yet interrelated themes relevant for the understanding of the colonial state: practices, violence, and agency. Hereby, we also accentuate the value of a non-state-centric approach to the analysis of the colonial state.