Search results
1 – 10 of 839Yubo Guo, Jinchan Liu, Chuan Chen, Xiaowei Luo and Igor Martek
Public–Private Partnerships (PPPs) are crucial to the procurement of global infrastructure projects. Moreover, a price mode based on a cluster of core concessionary items is key…
Abstract
Purpose
Public–Private Partnerships (PPPs) are crucial to the procurement of global infrastructure projects. Moreover, a price mode based on a cluster of core concessionary items is key to the delivery of value-for-money and successful project outcomes. However, existing research has yet to fully identify PPP concessionary items, nor yet described the range of practical price modes. This study provides taxonomy of core concessionary items impacting PPP projects, systematically classifies price modes, and assesses the applicability and risk impacts of those price modes on PPP projects.
Design/methodology/approach
This study adopts a comparative case study method in analyzing core concessionary items and alternative price modes. China is taken as the context, as it is one of the world’s largest PPP markets. In ensuring research validity and reliability, diverse data sources are utilized, with a graphic content analysis tool developed to capture the structure of price modes.
Findings
Eight PPP price modes are identified. These are: (1) UP (Unit Price) mode, (2) ALS (Annual Lump Sum) mode, (3) IRR (Internal Rate of Return) mode, (4) RP (Return for Investing Capital (RIC) - Profit Rate of O&M (PROM)) mode, (5) RFP (RIC - Financing Interest Rate (FR) - PROM) mode, (6) RFPL (RIC - FR - PROM - Lower Limit of User Charge (LLoUC)) mode, (7) RFL (RIC - FR - Lump Sum/Fixed Unit Price O&M Contract (LSOM/FUP)) mode, and (8) RFLL (RIC - FR - LSOM/FUP - LLoUC) mode. Other main findings are as follows: (1) Five risk allocation configurations can be achieved via these price modes. Yet while different price modes enable the allocation of specific risks, these do not always align with contracting parties’ original intentions. (2) IRR and RP modes may be less applicable in general because of their vulnerability in allocating critical risks and capacity for spurring opportunistic behavior.
Originality/value
By depicting the paths by which concessionary items in price modes affect cash flow, a systematic analysis of price modes was conducted exposing structural characteristics, along with risk allocation choice implications. The study is unique in: (1) Providing a systematic classification of PPP price modes used in PPP projects, (2) Presenting a comprehensive identification and streamlining of concessionary items in PPP practice, and (3) Analyzing the risk effects of different price modes. Together, these outcomes offer a hitherto unavailable perspective on PPP project risk management. The value of the study lies in the following: (1) Existing studies employ diverse concessionary items, but their applicability varies. This study offers an overarching framework facilitating decision-making in selecting appropriate PPP price modes and in determining concessionary items. (2) This study adds to the understanding of PPP price modes in significant ways that will aid local governments and potential sponsors in crafting and administrating more workable contract designs.
Details
Keywords
Yubo Guo, Yangyang Su, Chuan Chen and Igor Martek
The Public–Private Partnership (PPP) modality plays an important role in the procurement of global infrastructure projects. Regarding PPP's complex transaction structure, pricing…
Abstract
Purpose
The Public–Private Partnership (PPP) modality plays an important role in the procurement of global infrastructure projects. Regarding PPP's complex transaction structure, pricing of a PPP project is critical to both parties where the government pursues a high value for money (VFM) and the investor strives to maximize its financial gains. Despite the straightforward win–win principle, a formidable compromise is often the case to end up with a fairly acceptable price, subject to many determinants such as the risk profile, expected return, technological innovation and capacities of both parties. Among them, this study chooses to examine the “managing flexibility” (MF) capacity of investors in pricing of a PPP project, in light of the widely recognized importance of a real-option perspective toward the long term, complex and uncertain PPP arrangement. This study addresses two major questions: (1) how is MF in PPP projects to be valued and (2) how are PPP projects to be priced when considering a project's MF value.
Design/methodology/approach
A binomial tree model is used to evaluate the MF value in PPP projects. Based on the developed MF pricing model, net present value (NPV) and adjusted VFM value are then calculated. Finally, a multi-objective decision-making method (MODM) was adopted to determine the optimal level of returns based on invested capital (ROIC), return on operation maintenance (ROOM) and concession period.
Findings
The applicability and functionality of the proposed model is investigated using a real project case. For a given return, extended NPV and adjusted VFM value were calculated and analyzed using sensitivity analysis. Factor influence is shown by the model to be dependent on factor impact on cash flow. Subsequently, a multi-objective decision-making (MODM) model was adopted to determine the optimal level of returns, where the solution approximates the real-world bidding price. Results confirm that the pricing model provides a reliable and practical PPP proposal pricing tool.
Originality/value
This study proposes an integrated framework for valuing MF in PPP projects and thus more accurately determine optimal pricing of PPP projects than revealed in extant research. The model offers a practical tool to aid in the valuation of PPP projects.
Details
Keywords
Afiqah R. Radzi, Rahimi A. Rahman and Shu Ing Doh
Various approaches have emerged to assist practitioners in making more informed decisions in highway construction projects. However, industry practitioners are still using…
Abstract
Purpose
Various approaches have emerged to assist practitioners in making more informed decisions in highway construction projects. However, industry practitioners are still using subjective ways to make decisions. Also, researchers have developed tools and techniques with similar objectives. Lack of information on what has been developed might lead to those issues. Therefore, this paper aims to review trends of evolution, pinpoint strengths and gaps in the literature and identifies potential future directions for decision-making research in highway construction projects.
Design/methodology/approach
A systematic review was conducted on published articles on decision-making in highway construction projects using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA) technique.
Findings
The analysis of 101 articles revealed that existing decision-making research in highway construction projects targets improvements in four areas: feasibility, conceptual, detailed scope and detailed design. The four areas consist of sixteen subthemes that are detailed in this study. In addition, most research involved developing decision support tools and systems as well as decision-making models, techniques and frameworks. Lastly, several research areas have emerged, such as adding more decision criteria including those with uncertainties, expanding existing decision-making models into decision support systems, benchmarking decision criteria between different sample populations and exploring inter-and intra-relationships between decision criteria.
Originality/value
This paper provides an overview of existing research on decision-making in highway construction projects. Also, it reveals research gaps in the body of knowledge to point out directions for future research. Finally, industry practitioners can use the findings to develop strategies for effective decision-making processes.
Details
Keywords
In demand-driven markets, customer value, sometimes called perceived use value or consumer surplus, is defined by the customer rather than the firm. The value a firm can…
Abstract
Purpose
In demand-driven markets, customer value, sometimes called perceived use value or consumer surplus, is defined by the customer rather than the firm. The value a firm can appropriate, its profits, is driven by the customer’s willingness to pay for the value they receive, adjusted by costs. This paper introduces a conceptual framework that helps understand value creation and appropriation in demand-driven markets and shows how to influence them through strategic decision-making.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper uses an axiomatic approach combined with an extended analytical formulation of the jobs-to-be-done framework to contextualise demand-driven markets. It mathematically derives implications for managerial decision-making concerning selecting customer segments, optimising customer value creation and maximising firm value appropriation in a competitive environment.
Findings
Rooting strategic decision-making in the jobs-to-be-done framework allows distinguishing between what customers want to achieve (goal), what product attributes need to be satisfied (opportunity space/constraints) and what value creation criteria related to features are important (utility function). This paper shows that starting from a job-to-be-done, the problem of identifying which customer segments to serve, what product to offer and what price to charge, can be formulated as an optimisation problem that simultaneously (rather than sequentially) solves for the three decision variables, customer segments, product features and price, by maximising the value that a firm can appropriate, subject to maximising customer value creation and constrained by the competitive environment.
Practical implications
Applying the derived results to simultaneously deciding which customer segments to target, what product features to offer and what price to charge, given a set of competing products, allows managers to increase their chances of winning the competitive game.
Originality/value
This paper shows that starting from a job-to-be-done and simultaneously focusing on customers, product features, price and competitors enhances firm profitability. Strategic decision-making is formulated as an optimisation problem based on an axiomatic approach contextualising demand-driven markets.
Details
Keywords
Mohit Goswami, Yash Daultani and M. Ramkumar
This paper analytically models and numerically investigates two operating levers, namely optimization of product price and optimization of product quality in the context of a…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper analytically models and numerically investigates two operating levers, namely optimization of product price and optimization of product quality in the context of a manufacturer that sells the products directly in the marketplace. The study attempts to identify how optimizing product quality and product price can fulfill a manufacturer's economic aims such as maximization of the manufacturer's profit and market demand. Anchored to the extant literature, the demand is modeled as a parametric joint multiplicative function of price and quality. Further, price is modeled as a function of product quality.
Design/methodology/approach
First, the authors evolve the analytical expression for the manufacturer's profit. Thereafter, following the mathematical principles of unconstrained optimization, the authors arrive at the conditions for optimal product quality and product price. The authors further perform numerical experiments to understand the behavior of economic dimensions such as profit and demand with respect to sensitivities associated with cost, quality and price.
Findings
The authors find that under product quality optimization, the optimal product quality is a unique solution in that a highest possible theoretical manufacturer's profit is obtained. However, in the case of product price optimization, the optimal product price is non-unique and is a function of product quality. The authors further find that in the context of functional quality-level expectations, product quality optimization as an operating lever gives a better dividend. However, in the case of higher product quality expectations, product price optimization performs better than product quality optimization. Further, several novel findings are also obtained from numerical experimentations.
Originality/value
The findings of the authors' study have implications for types of industries characterized by relatively low as well as relatively high competitive intensity. Further, as opposed to several extant studies that have often carried out joint optimization of quality and price, the authors' study is one of the first to study the impact of product price and product quality on the manufacturer's economic objective in a disparate and focused manner, thus capturing individual effects.
Details
Keywords
This paper gives a model of collusion formation and a method of measuring the degree of it among the traders/bidders in the agricultural commodity markets in India. The important…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper gives a model of collusion formation and a method of measuring the degree of it among the traders/bidders in the agricultural commodity markets in India. The important assumption is that the bidding is repetitive with a set of common bidders. The theory has been derived based on the behavior of the wholesale market of agricultural commodities in India. The paper is based on full information in the collusion formation. The paper first derives the theoretical structure of the bidders' behavior and thereafter derives a measure of collusion formation with the help of real-life data.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper used the standard theory of optimization and the theory of auction and probability statistics.
Findings
This is a complete information model of cartel formation. The bidding is repetitive and continues forever in discrete time. Hence bidders behavior is observable. Using the proposed method, if the APMC measures for each market and publishes on a periodic basis, say weekly basis, then it will be easier to break the collusion in the market where relative collision is present. For example, if a farmer has three options to sell in three different markets, then the published data would help them to select the market where the degree of collusion is relatively lower. Moreover, the undesirable loss can be avoided based on the right choice of market. As a result, transaction costs will be optima.
Originality/value
The paper first derives the theoretical structure of the bidders' behavior and thereafter derives a measure of collusion formation with the help of real-life data.
Details
Keywords
Ahmed Abdullah Danook and Omar-F Hasan Al.obaidy
The purpose of this study is to examine the dimensions of strategic intent (SI; see Appendix 1) according to the Hamel and Prahalad model as a building for the future, relying on…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to examine the dimensions of strategic intent (SI; see Appendix 1) according to the Hamel and Prahalad model as a building for the future, relying on today’s knowledge-based and proactive strategic directions of management as long-term and deep-perspective creative directions, objective vision and rational analysis, integrative in work, survival structure and comprehensiveness in perception.
Design/methodology/approach
The quantitative approach was used based on research, detection and proof, as data were collected from leaders amounting to 70 respondents and analyzed in the SPSS program and ant colony optimization (see Appendix 1) algorithm and interpretation of the results.
Findings
It was found that the SI dimensions are poorly available due to problems related to foresight, capabilities and the strategic structure that represents the head of strategic objectives.
Practical implications
The empirical evaluation view of the study is valuable for leaders to draw a future strategy of advantage for organizations in developing countries to enrich their core capabilities by activating the SI dimensions.
Originality/value
It stems from a vital issue related to strategic dimensions aimed at a better future for strategic executive work, especially after the crisis that led to a significant decline in the level of performance of organizations.
Details
Keywords
Ingo Pies and Vladislav Valentinov
Stakeholder theory understands business in terms of relationships among stakeholders whose interests are mainly joint but may be occasionally conflicting. In the latter case…
Abstract
Purpose
Stakeholder theory understands business in terms of relationships among stakeholders whose interests are mainly joint but may be occasionally conflicting. In the latter case, managers may need to make trade-offs between these interests. The purpose of this paper is to explore the nature of managerial decision-making about these trade-offs.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper draws on the ordonomic approach which sees business life to be rife with social dilemmas and locates the role of stakeholders in harnessing or resolving these dilemmas through engagement in rule-finding and rule-setting processes.
Findings
The ordonomic approach suggests that stakeholder interests trade-offs ought to be neither ignored nor avoided, but rather embraced and welcomed as an opportunity for bringing to fruition the joint interest of stakeholders in playing a better game of business. Stakeholders are shown to bear responsibility for overcoming the perceived trade-offs through the institutional management of social dilemmas.
Originality/value
For many stakeholder theorists, the nature of managerial decision-making about trade-offs between conflicting stakeholder interests and the nature of trade-offs themselves have been a long-standing point of contention. The paper shows that trade-offs may be useful for the value creation process and explicitly discusses managerial strategies for dealing with them.
Details
Keywords
Mingyu Wu, Che Fai Yeong, Eileen Lee Ming Su, William Holderbaum and Chenguang Yang
This paper aims to provide a comprehensive analysis of the state of the art in energy efficiency for autonomous mobile robots (AMRs), focusing on energy sources, consumption…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to provide a comprehensive analysis of the state of the art in energy efficiency for autonomous mobile robots (AMRs), focusing on energy sources, consumption models, energy-efficient locomotion, hardware energy consumption, optimization in path planning and scheduling methods, and to suggest future research directions.
Design/methodology/approach
The systematic literature review (SLR) identified 244 papers for analysis. Research articles published from 2010 onwards were searched in databases including Google Scholar, ScienceDirect and Scopus using keywords and search criteria related to energy and power management in various robotic systems.
Findings
The review highlights the following key findings: batteries are the primary energy source for AMRs, with advances in battery management systems enhancing efficiency; hybrid models offer superior accuracy and robustness; locomotion contributes over 50% of a mobile robot’s total energy consumption, emphasizing the need for optimized control methods; factors such as the center of mass impact AMR energy consumption; path planning algorithms and scheduling methods are essential for energy optimization, with algorithm choice depending on specific requirements and constraints.
Research limitations/implications
The review concentrates on wheeled robots, excluding walking ones. Future work should improve consumption models, explore optimization methods, examine artificial intelligence/machine learning roles and assess energy efficiency trade-offs.
Originality/value
This paper provides a comprehensive analysis of energy efficiency in AMRs, highlighting the key findings from the SLR and suggests future research directions for further advancements in this field.
Details
Keywords
This paper aims to explore the impact of emerging technologies, such as virtual reality, voice search, artificial intelligence, robotics and the Metaverse on hotel sales…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to explore the impact of emerging technologies, such as virtual reality, voice search, artificial intelligence, robotics and the Metaverse on hotel sales, marketing and revenue optimization.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper uses a combination of articles published in Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Technology and industry case studies to examine the integration of innovative technologies in hotel sales, marketing and revenue optimization strategies, plus the role of fundamental practices in ensuring long-term success.
Findings
The analysis demonstrates that innovative technologies can significantly enhance customer engagement, streamline booking processes and unlock new revenue streams. However, this paper also highlights the importance of fundamental marketing practices, such as user-friendly websites, fast and reliable/mobile-friendly websites, search engine optimization, social media engagement, content marketing and data-driven revenue management, in maintaining a hotel’s competitive advantage in the dynamic world of hospitality.
Practical implications
The findings suggest that hoteliers need to strike a balance between embracing emerging technologies and maintaining traditional marketing fundamentals to remain competitive and drive revenue growth. This integrated approach ensures long-term success in the ever-evolving hospitality landscape.
Originality/value
This paper bridges the gap between academia and industry practitioners by providing practical insights and implications that can be applied directly to hotels’ marketing and operational practices. The paper highlights the importance of balancing innovation with fundamental marketing strategies, emphasizing the need for an integrated approach to ensure long-term success in the ever-evolving world of hotel sales, marketing and revenue optimization – as well as those same tools in a plethora of hospitality and tourism venues working alongside the accommodations sector.
研究目的
探讨新兴技术(如虚拟现实、语音搜索、人工智能、机器人技术和元宇宙)对酒店销售、营销和收入优化的影响。
研究方法
本文结合发表在《酒店旅游科技杂志》(JHTT)的文章和行业案例, 研究了创新技术在酒店销售、营销和收入优化策略中的整合, 以及基础实践在确保长期成功方面的作用。
研究发现
分析表明, 创新技术可以显著增强客户参与度, 简化预订流程, 并开拓新的收入来源。此外, 文章强调了基本营销实践, 如用户友好的网站、快速可靠/移动友好的网站、搜索引擎优化、社交媒体参与、内容营销和数据驱动的收入管理, 在保证酒店在充满变化的行业竞争中维持优势的重要性。
实际应用
研究结果表明, 酒店经营者需要在使用新兴技术和保持传统营销基本原则之间取得平衡, 以保持竞争力并推动收入增长。这种综合方法确保在不断发展的酒店销售、营销和收入优化领域取得长期成功。
研究创新
本文通过提供可直接应用于酒店营销和运营实践的实际见解和影响, 弥合了学术界与行业从业者之间的鸿沟。文章强调了创新与基本营销策略的平衡的重要性, 强调了综合方法的必要性, 以确保在不断发展的酒店销售、营销和收入优化领域取得长期成功, 以及这些工具在众多酒店和旅游场所与住宿部门一起工作的多样性领域中的应用。
Details