Does the Balanced Scorecard make a difference to the strategy development process?

A great number of strategy tools are being taught in strategic management modules. These tools are available to managers for use in facilitating strategic decision making and enhancing the strategy development process in their organisations. A number of studies have been published examining which are the most popular tools; however there is little empirical evidence on how their utilisation influences the strategy process. This paper is based on a large scale international survey on the strategy development process, and seeks to examine the impact of a particular strategy tool, the Balanced Scorecard (BSC), upon the strategy process. Recently, it has been suggested that as a strategy tool, the BSC can influence all elements of the strategy process. The results of this study indicate that although there are significant differences in some elements of the strategy process between the organisations that have implemented the BSC and those that have not, the impact is not comprehensive.     

Measuring performance in Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary with the Balanced Scorecard

Measuring the performance of public sector organisations has always been a difficult and contentious area. However, with continuing pressures for transparency, accountability and value for money it is one that requires increasing management attention. This paper describes the Balanced Scorecard approach to performance measurement, assesses the applicability of the approach in the public sector and illustrates how the approach was used by Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary in Scotland as part of a strategic policing initiative.     

PROMETHEE based sustainable concept selection

Manufacturing organisations started recognising the importance of sustainability concepts: This is due to increasing government regulations and the consciousness of the sustainable products among the customers. In general, the sustainability concepts are classified into economic, environment and social perspectives. The classification of sustainable concept concerning to manufacturing firms can be material oriented, product design oriented and manufacturing process oriented. Sustainable concept selection is a vital problem for the contemporary manufacturing organisations. The selection process includes multiple criteria, therefore a Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) method namely, PROMETHEE (Preference Ranking Organisational Method for Enrichment Evaluation) is used in the study to select the best sustainable concept considering the criteria from social, economical and natural perspectives. The study revealed that the change of material as the best orientation and it implies that the material should be done at the first stage to achieve sustainability in the case organisation.     

An agent-based simulation model to evaluate alternative co-payment scenarios for contributing to health systems financing

Ageing populations, rapid technological progress and recent public budget cuts currently threaten the sustainability of public health systems. To meet growing needs with declining resources, decision-makers must identify new ways to avoid reducing the quality of services offered to citizens. This paper focuses on the so-called “co-payment” tools aimed to obtain additional resources for the public health budget directly from citizens. Whereas certain forms of co-payments have always been introduced within health systems to prevent moral hazard behaviours, other co-payment mechanisms are explicitly intended to help finance public healthcare systems. Literature and empirical findings do not agree about the final impact of such co-payment tools, particularly whether they can attain system sustainability and guarantee equitably delivered services. In this paper, we develop an agent-based simulation model which can be used by decision-makers as a decision support tool to compare different co-payment rules and evaluate their impact on the public budget and the health expense of different groups of citizens.     

Supporting the strategy process: a survey of UK OR/MS practitioners

This paper reports the results of an online survey conducted with practitioner members of the UK Operational Research (OR) Society. The purpose of the survey was to explore the current practice of supporting the strategy process in terms of activities supported and tools used. The results of the survey are compared to those of previous surveys to explore developments in, inter alia, the use of management/strategy tools and ‘soft’ Operational Research/Management Science (OR/MS) tools. The survey results demonstrate that OR practitioners actively support the strategy process within their organisations. While a wide variety of tools, drawn from the OR/MS and management/strategy fields, are used to support the strategy process within organisations, the findings suggest that soft OR/MS tools are not regularly used. The findings also demonstrate that tools are combined to support the strategy process from both within and across the OR/MS and management/strategy fields. The paper ends by identifying a number of areas for further research.     

Knowledge management <Emphasis Type="Italic">sans frontières</Emphasis>

Knowledge management is a topic that crosses borders of various kinds, such as those between departments, between organisations or between countries. In this paper we will consider various issues relating to knowledge management, in the context where more than one department/organisation/country is involved. To do this, we place an emphasis on knowledge management as a process, rather than as an organisational system or, worse, as a piece of technology. This process involves trust, negotiation—and indeed some technological support. In this paper we wish to introduce the concept of ‘triangles of trust’, and to focus on where ‘the top meets the bottom’ in terms of knowledge management and organisational learning. Partial examples will be offered in support of our views, but no full and complete examples—knowledge management simply is not well enough understood or documented for that yet. Our overall conclusion is that there is no one best way to “do” knowledge management, but there are principles that ought to be applied.     

MARINE PROTECTED AREAS IN THE HIGH SEAS AND THEIR IMPACT ON INTERNATIONAL FISHING AGREEMENTS

Abstract Marine protected areas (MPAs) are gaining momentum as tools within fisheries management. Although many studies have been conducted to their use and potential, only few authors have considered their use in the High Seas. In this paper, we investigate the effects of fish growth enhancing MPAs on the formation of regional fisheries management organisations (RFMOs) for highly migratory fish stocks. We argue that in absence of enforcement MPAs constitute a weakest‐link public good, which can only be realized if everyone agrees. We combine this notion with a game theoretic model of RFMO formation to derive potentially stable RFMOs with and without MPAs. We find that MPAs generally increase the parameter range over which RFMOs are stable, and that they increase stability in a number of cases as compared to the case without MPAs. They do not necessarily induce a fully cooperative solution among all fishing nations. In summary, results of this paper suggest a positive role for MPAs in the High Seas.     

Developing an implementation capacity: justifications from prior research

Implementing innovative operational research solutions into organizations can be messy. Pragmatic inquiry suggests the first step in dissolving a mess is to determine the mindset, or set of concepts, that will be used by decision makers to inform their day to day choice of activities. Van de Ven and Poole reviewed much of the organizational change literature and identified four reasons why change occurs. They labelled them, life cycle, evolution, teleology and dialectic. It would seem logical to suggest that any attempt to make sense of the mess of implementation needs to span these four reasons. However, these reasons need to be operationalized into a mindset for implementers. To do this, the management implementation literature was reviewed under each of these reasons. The result is a justification of four concepts that can create a mindset likely to improve the implementation capacity of organizations. This mindset is that organizations make greater use of ‘champions’ ‘continuous improvement’ ‘job rotation’ and ‘debate’ over alternative activities. Exactly how so, is for individual organizations to interpret.     

Complexity management in practice: A Viable System Model intervention in an Irish eco-community

While soft OR tools offer specific solutions to manage complexity in organisations, little is known concerning soft OR tools to deal with self-organisation in communities. This paper describes an action research project where the authors facilitated a process of self-organisation in a developing Irish eco-community whose members operate in a non-hierarchical, and cooperative fashion. We used the Viable System Model as a hermeneutical enabler of the community learning process concerning their self-organisation: by embedding VSM distinctions, they redesigned their primary tasks and developed meta-systemic management tools to deal with the complexity they were facing. Observations of the dynamics of the self-organising process over a period of 3 years show the community designed their roles and tasks more effectively, improved the connectivity of roles, and in general, their viability and sustainability. We reflect on the distinctiveness of the methods used, and their contributions to research in soft OR in community projects.     

Chain graph interpretations and their relations revisited

In this paper we study how different theoretical concepts of Bayesian networks have been extended to chain graphs. Today there exist mainly three different interpretations of chain graphs in the literature. These are the Lauritzen–Wermuth–Frydenberg, the Andersson–Madigan–Perlman and the multivariate regression interpretations. The different chain graph interpretations have been studied independently and over time different theoretical concepts have been extended from Bayesian networks to also work for the different chain graph interpretations. This has however led to confusion regarding what concepts exist for what interpretation.In this article we do therefore study some of these concepts and how they have been extended to chain graphs as well as what results have been achieved so far. More importantly we do also identify when the concepts have not been extended and contribute within these areas. Specifically we study the following theoretical concepts: Unique representations of independence models, the split and merging operators, the conditions for when an independence model representable by one chain graph interpretation can be represented by another chain graph interpretation and finally the extension of Meek's conjecture to chain graphs. With our new results we give a coherent overview of how each of these concepts is extended for each of the different chain graph interpretations.     

DEGREE OF ECONOMIC UNSUSTAINABILITY IN THE MANAGEMENT OF RENEWABLE RESOURCES

A criterion commonly used to determine economic sustainability posits that the discounted welfare should not decrease over time. Resource management problems involving fluctuating stocks may be exacerbated by a lack of sustainable policies unless some violations of this condition are accepted. Moreover, sustainable policies may lead to the minimal welfare levels. To alleviate these problems, a new notion of sustainability is suggested. In this new form of sustainability, violations of nondecreasing welfare are accepted to a certain degree. The policies that maximize the discounted welfare under the constraint for the largest accepted violation for sustainability satisfy a dynamic programming type of fixed‐point condition that can be effectively utilized for finding optimal policies. The new notion of sustainability can also be utilized in defining an index for measuring the degree of overall unsustainability of resource management problems and different harvesting policies.     

Tools for resource-constrained project scheduling and control: forward and backward slack analysis

Project managers generally consider slack as a measure of the scheduling flexibility associated with the activities in the project network. Nevertheless, when resource constraints appear, this information must be calculated and analysed carefully. In this context, to handle project feasible schedules is very hard work for project managers. In order to develop useful tools for decision making, the authors extend the concepts of activity slack and define a new activity criticality index based on them that permits us to classify the activities in the resource-constrained project scheduling and control context. Additionally, these new concepts have been integrated into standard project management software as new commands. Hence the capabilities of project management software are improved. Finally, an example that illustrates the use and application of the new activity classification is also included.     

A hybrid model based on dynamic programming,neural networks,and surrogate value for inventory optimisation applications

This paper proposes a new approach to minimise inventory levels and their associated costs within large geographically dispersed organisations. For such organisations, attaining a high degree of agility is becoming increasingly important. Linear regression-based tools have traditionally been employed to assist human experts in inventory optimisation; endeavours; recently, Neural Network (NN) techniques have been proposed for this domain. The objective of this paper is to create a hybrid framework that can be utilised for analysis, modelling and forecasting purposes. This framework combines two existing approaches and introduces a new associated cost parameter that serves as a surrogate for customer satisfaction. The use of this hybrid framework is described using a running example related to a large geographically dispersed organisation.     

Donor patterns: a modular structure for sharing knowledge

Groups within organisations learn from experience. The learning experience may itself be enough to help a decision and may also be codified into a knowledge base for use at another time. A modular structure, called a Pattern Language, provides both a base for recording this knowledge and also a format for the debriefing of experience to gain that knowledge. The modularity means that the modules, or prototypes of them, may be imported from other applications so speeding the process and encouraging the transfer of good practices. Two applications, in process engineering in a chemical company and strategy formation in a small charity, are given, which demonstrate the use of donor patterns as means of importing knowledge and stimulating learning. Although the circumstances of the two cases are quite different the processes are similar in duration and structure, suggesting a model for future application.     

Dynamics of human resource and knowledge management

Recent transitions from the industrial to knowledge economy suggest an immediate and wholesale retraining scenario so that many organisations can remain at the cutting edge of technology. The dynamics of the job market is creating a challenge for many organisations in recruiting and retaining their core staff. In fact, many companies are in fear of losing critical business knowledge when their employees leave. In this paper, systems dynamics is employed to illustrate the relationship between recruitment, training, skills, and knowledge in a causal loop form. Strategies for human resource management are developed by conducting time-based dynamic analysis. We anticipate that systems dynamics modelling would help organisations to devise efficient human resource management strategies.     

A survey of decision support system applications (1988–1994)

To extend a previous survey of specific decision support system (DSS) applications over the period (January 1971–April 1988), we have conducted a follow-up survey of DSS applications published between May 1988 and December 1994. Two hundred seventy-one published applications are identified. This survey reveals that there appear to be more creative applications of optimisation and suggestion model-based DSS than simulation-based applications. This is evidenced by a proportional increase of optimisation and suggestion models and a decrease of representation models. Moreover, group decision support systems, executive support systems, and knowledge-based systems applications are becoming more prevalent in many organisations. Although management science (MS)/operational research (OR) models continue to play critical roles, there is a clear observable trend in the DSS model area that three non-MS/OR tools are emerging as powerful DSS tools: graphics, artificial intelligence, and visual interactive modeling.     

Embedding optimization in computational science workflows

Workflows support the automation of scientific processes, providing mechanisms that underpin modern computational science. They facilitate access to remote instruments, databases and parallel and distributed computers. Importantly, they allow software pipelines that perform multiple complex simulations (leveraging distributed platforms), with one simulation driving another. Such an environment is ideal for computational science experiments that require the evaluation of a range of different scenarios “in silico” in an attempt to find ones that optimize a particular outcome. However, in general, existing workflow tools do not incorporate optimization algorithms, and thus whilst users can specify simulation pipelines, they need to invoke the workflow as a stand-alone computation within an external optimization tool. Moreover, many existing workflow engines do not leverage parallel and distributed computers, making them unsuitable for executing computational science simulations. To solve this problem, we have developed a methodology for integrating optimization algorithms directly into workflows. We implement a range of generic actors for an existing workflow system called Kepler, and discuss how they can be combined in flexible ways to support various different design strategies. We illustrate the system by applying it to an existing bio-engineering design problem running on a Grid of distributed clusters.     

Analysis of collaborative savings and cost allocation techniques for the cooperative carrier facility location problem

Transport companies may cooperate to increase their efficiency levels by, for example, the exchange of orders or vehicle capacity. In this paper a new approach to horizontal carrier collaboration is presented: the sharing of distribution centres (DCs) with partnering organisations. This problem can be classified as a cooperative facility location problem and formulated as an innovative mixed integer linear programme. To ensure cooperation sustainability, collaborative costs need to be allocated fairly to the different participants. To analyse the benefits of cooperative facility location and the effects of different cost allocation techniques, numerical experiments based on experimental design are carried out on a UK case study. Sharing DCs may lead to significant cost savings up to 21.6%. In contrast to the case of sharing orders or vehicles, there are diseconomies of scale in terms of the number of partners and more collaborative benefit can be expected when partners are unequal in size. Moreover, results indicate that horizontal collaboration at the level of DCs works well with a limited number of partners and can be based on intuitively appealing cost sharing techniques, which may reduce alliance complexity and enforce the strength of mutual partner relationships.     

Poly-symmetry in processor-sharing systems

We consider a system of processor-sharing queues with state-dependent service rates. These are allocated according to balanced fairness within a polymatroid capacity set. Balanced fairness is known to be both insensitive and Pareto-efficient in such systems, which ensures that the performance metrics, when computable, will provide robust insights into the real performance of the system considered. We first show that these performance metrics can be evaluated with a complexity that is polynomial in the system size if the system is partitioned into a finite number of parts, so that queues are exchangeable within each part and asymmetric across different parts. This in turn allows us to derive stochastic bounds for a larger class of systems which satisfy less restrictive symmetry assumptions. These results are applied to practical examples of tree data networks, such as backhaul networks of Internet service providers, and computer clusters.     

WEAK AND STRONG SUSTAINABILITY,ENVIRONMENTAL CONSERVATION AND ECONOMIC GROWTH

ABSTRACT. To investigate the role of explicit and implicit assumptions in different models of weak and strong sustain‐ability, the Solow/Hartwick model of intergenerational equity with nonrenewable resources is gradually extended to include renewable resources, endogenous technical progress, and stock pollution. This reveals the fundamental role of endogenous technical progress for sustainable development, the inconsistency of implicit sustainability assumptions in various models, as well as the existence of a Hartwick rule for Daly's steady‐state economy. Moreover, it shows that the concepts of Solow sustainability and strong sustainability coincide as a special case of weak sustainability. The latter integrates economic and environmental concerns and aims at maintaining the welfare potential of an economy over time. It does not rule out economic growth by assumption. Rather, the analysis shows that environmental conservation and economic growth can be compatible with each other, without jeopardizing social welfare. Finally, the analysis shows that the discussion of sustain‐ability models cannot be restricted to the explicit differences that are usually pointed out by their authors and commentators. Rather, implicit assumptions must be made explicit.