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To achieve a full understanding of the role of marketing from plan to profit requires a knowledge of the basic building blocks. This textbook introduces the key concepts in the art or science of marketing to practising managers. Understanding your customers and consumers, the 4 Ps (Product, Place, Price and Promotion) provides the basic tools for effective marketing. Deploying your resources and informing your managerial decision making is dealt with in Unit VII introducing marketing intelligence, competition, budgeting and organisational issues. The logical conclusion of this effort is achieving sales and the particular techniques involved are explored in the final section.

In situations where the crew is reduced, the optimization of crew task allocation and sequencing (CTAS) can significantly enhance the operational efficiency of the man-machine system by rationally distributing workload and minimizing task completion time. Existing related studies exhibit a limited consideration of workload distribution and involve the violation of precedence constraints in the solution process. This study proposes a CTAS method to address these issues.

The method defines visual, auditory, cognitive and psychomotor (VACP) load balancing objectives and integrates them with workload balancing and minimum task completion time to ensure equitable workload distribution and task execution efficiency, and then a multi-objective optimization model for CTAS is constructed. Subsequently, it designs a population initialization strategy and a repair mechanism to maintain sequence feasibility, and utilizes them to improve the non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm III (NSGA-III) for solving the CTAS model.

The CTAS method is validated through a numerical example involving a mission with a specific type of armored vehicle. The results demonstrate that the method achieves equitable workload distribution by integrating VACP load balancing and workload balancing. Moreover, the improved NSGA-III maintains sequence feasibility and thus reduces computation time.

The study can achieve equitable workload distribution and enhance the search efficiency of the optimal CTAS scheme. It provides a novel perspective for task planners in objective determination and solution methodologies for CTAS.

Subjects participated in a three‐person negotiation exercise, in which they had to form two‐ or three‐way coalitions to receive resources. The effects of power position (high, medium, low), distribution norms (contribution, need), and task meeting structure (caucus, joint) on the distribution of resources were examined. Most coalition theories assume that the power position of the players calls into play different levels of entitlement which will determine the allocation of resources. There has, however, been little attempt to manipulate entitlement, in the form of distribution norms, separately from power structure. In the research reported here, three‐person groups contained a high, medium, and low power player. The dominant group distribution norm was manipulated as either contribution‐based or need‐based. Task meeting structure was manipulated by beginning each group meeting with either a three‐way meeting between all players (joint) or a series of one‐on‐one meetings (caucus). As predicted, groups that began by caucusing had a higher incidence of two‐way agreements than groups that began with joint meetings. The task meeting structure interacted with power position such that caucusing increased the high power player's outcome, while the joint meeting structure increased the low power player's outcome. In addition, the distribution norm interacted with power position such that the contribution‐based norm increased the outcomes of high power players, while the need‐based norm increased the outcomes of the low power players.

Over the past years, collaborative robots have been introduced as a new generation of industrial robotics working alongside humans to share the workload. These robots have the potential to enable human–robot collaboration (HRC) for flexible automation. However, the deployment of these robots in industrial environments, particularly in assembly, still comprises several challenges, of which one is skills-based tasks distribution between humans and robots. With ever-decreasing product life cycles and high-mix low volume production, the skills-based task distribution is to become a frequent activity. This paper aims to present a methodology for tasks distribution between human and robot in assembly work by complexity-based tasks classification.

The assessment method of assembly tasks is based on the physical features of the components and associated task description. The attributes that can influence assembly complexity for automation are presented. Physical experimentation with a collaborative robot and work with several industrial cases helped to formulate the presented method.

The method will differentiate the tasks with higher complexity of handling, mounting, human safety and part feeding from low-complexity tasks, thereby simplifying collaborative automation in HRC scenario. Such structured method for tasks distribution in HRC can significantly reduce deployment and changeover times.

Assembly attributes affecting HRC automation are identified. The methodology is presented for evaluating tasks for assigning to the robot and creating a work–load balance forming a human–robot work team. Finally, an assessment tool for simplified industrial deployment.

The purpose of this paper is to understand how business process configurations influence motivation among process participants.

An experiment was conducted in which business process rules complexity, work backlog, and case distribution method were manipulated. Participant motivation and its antecedents were measured using a survey.

The study finds that business process configurations influence the motivation of process participants through their effect on perceived competence. Increasing business process rules complexity reduces competence. The effect of case distribution method on competence depends on backlog. Sequential distribution undermines competence in the presence of backlog, and enhances competence when backlog is absent. However, batch distribution results in higher competence in the presence of backlog than in its absence.

The study confirms the applicability of self-determination theory for analyzing the effect of work settings, including business process configurations, on employee motivation. The study further demonstrates the applicability of the task technology fit model in the context of business process automation.

The study suggests that reducing process complexity through the use of information technology can benefit process participant motivation. Additionally, the study highlights the importance of case distribution method on performance expectations.

While much of the extant research has considered the enhancement of business processes at the organizational level, this study examines how business process design can be used to preserve and potentially enhance the motivation of human process participants.

Argues that the organization for logistics often favours an aggregation of all tasks into one department. This decision presupposes an extensive analysis of important contingency factors, like product line, environmental relations, technology and organizational size. However, such contingency factors have a limited influence, and are modified by the strategy of the organization. Defines selected contingency factors, examines the organization’s overall strategy and shows how these two factors can be combined in the light of the specific requirements of the firm’s logistical task.

The idea of Simon according to which instructions are premises for further decisions is formalized with respect to informationally decentralized organizations. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The paper is built on the economic theory of teams by Marschak and Radner. Team theory is particularly suited to the analysis of informationally decentralized systems. Teams are composed of agents who strive for a common aim, but are informed of different parameters that characterize the state of nature. In particular, the members want to maximize the team payoff function that depends on both the actions of the members and the state of nature.

For teams à la Marshack-Radner, since every member needs to compute optimal action rules, the paper shows that two types of expertise are required: forecasting expertise (as competence over the randomness of the parameters that affect the team payoff function) and organizational expertise (as comprehension of the relevant characteristics of the other members). When the members are supposed to have complete expertise, the only role of orders is the communication of information about the state of nature. Instead, when instructions report actions under the control of the senders, the team population can be classified into ranks, each one having a particular computational problem to solve. The paper analyzes the conditions under which instructions can correspond to different and ordered degree of intelligibility of the team operations. Through instructions non-decodable information is built directly into the decision rules chosen by the receivers, and instructions can realize economies in the use of expertise.

Instructions are formally shown to play a crucial role when expertise is differently distributed across agents.

Although one recent study concluded that physical distribution has reached semi‐maturity, the structure of the field has yet to be clearly defined. Despite the attempts of practitioners and academicians alike to portray PD, writers in the field have not provided a comprehensive, databased description of its structure which can be widely referred to the various firms engaged in distribution.That is, we still do not have generalisable empirical evidence on what constitutes the areas of PD and how they are related to one another.

This monograph progresses from a consideration of definitional issues to the development of a conceptual model for marketing‐logistics interaction and finally to a discussion of the issues of implementation of the model within the context of marketing strategy. Thus, following an introduction, Part II begins with definition of the field and examines the position of physical distribution in relation to marketing. Part III discusses the relationship of physical distribution and macro‐marketing, and is thus concerned about the social, aggregative goals of logistics systems, including the costs of distribution. Part IV continues this argument, examining specifically the influence of physical distribution on channel structure. Part V then focuses on the assumptions underlying the customer service function, asking how physical distribution can influence final demand in the market place. Part VI presents a conceptual model of marketing‐logistics demand stimulation. The operational issues concerned with its implementation are shown in Part VII; and a summary of the relevant points is presented in Part VIII. The concern has been not with presenting either new computational models nor empirical data but with presenting a new perspective on the marketing‐logistics interface. There is a need to reduce the barriers between these fields and to present more useful ways for co‐operation.

The purpose of this paper is to assess costs in the National and University Library of Croatia for processing Croatian web resources and the maintenance and development of the service, and to analyse the present organisation and workflow of their processing, and to propose improvements.

The assessment period was two months, during which the members of staff involved minutely monitored their tasks. The results were compared to the same exercise reported by the National Library of Australia and processing costs of cataloguing Croatian print publications.

The bottom‐up analysis of processing web resources shows that a balanced description of tasks and their distribution over staff members was established, and that the present workflow meets the requirements of efficient processing of web resources. As a general finding, approximately the same time was spent on archiving new items, as on the control and maintenance of the already archived ones due to the change of web resource properties, URL instability and the changes of technology. The comparative analysis showed: less time is spent on identification and selection and publishers' contacts on the part of the Croatian National Library compared to the Australian one; almost twice as much time was spent on gathering, quality assurance, and archiving instances in the Australian case than in the Croatian one; practically the same time was spent on cataloguing in both cases; and compared to cataloguing of print publications, significantly less time was spent on the print ones.

The paper is one of the two published articles on the in depth analysis of the workflow and processing costs of managing and selectively archiving legal deposit copies of web resources in a national library. Its potential value is in drawing attention of library managers of those institutions that deal with selective web archiving to assess costs and services in view of the legal obligations of libraries for preserving national cultural web heritage and meeting present and future users' needs.