...Applied mathematics in Engineering, Management and Technology 2 (2) 2014:466-475 www.amiemt-journal.com Using a combined method of hierarchical analysis and Monte Carlo simulation in order to identify and prioritize the target market selection criteria (Case study: Food distribution companies of Mashhad-Iran) Amir kariznoee Ph.D. student of Industrial Management,University of Mazandaran ,Iran (Corresponding Author's E-mail: Amir.kariznoee@yahoo.com) Monireh Bijandi Graduate of Accounting in Ferdowsi University of Mashhad,Iran Mahdi Ghayur Maddah Student of Public Management in Ferdowsi University of Mashhad,Iran Vajihe Mogharabi M.A. Student of Information Technology Management, Shahid beheshti University,Tehran,Iran Abstract The aim of this study is to identify and prioritize the key factors in selecting a target market in the food industry. In order to determine the components and subcomponents of this study, we have used previous researches in this area. In order to match these factors with the food industry situation and create a hierarchical structure, we have obtained the opinions of 323 experts about affecting factors on choosing a market in this industry with the use of questionnaire. Then, using a combination of hierarchal analysis process and Monte Carlo simulation and cooperation with 10 senior executives of distribution companies, the weight of each component and sub-component was determined. In general, four components and ten sub-components were...
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...IBM Case Analysis “What happened to IBM, the symbol of American supremacy?” -Challenge to America video, 1993 Problem Statement IBM needs to grow revenue and stay competitive in the dynamically changing computer marketplace of the 1990’s by maintaining technological leadership and accepting the organizational transformation which needs to be undertaken for them to excel. IBM needs to recapture their previously held powerful position in the personal computer and microprocessor markets and regain value in the company which will increase its stock value and competitive advantage in the marketplace. Problem Analysis In 1993 IBM reported a $5.6bn loss for the fourth quarter of 1992 ending a yearly deficit of $4.97bn; which at the time was the biggest annual loss in American corporate history. The fiscal loss could be explained in part to the ongoing aftermath of the severe 1990-91 recession that adversely affected the entire computer industry, but clearly IBM was no longer the colossal success it had been throughout most of its history. Primary to its listless growth was a fundamental change in the environment of the computer industry, which was the persistently accelerating rate of technological breakthrough in the world of data processing and IBM’s slow response to this change. IBM’s personal computing business technological environment was changing rapidly as the underlying shift in the computer field was from mainframe computing dominance toward personal computing...
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...Points Received: | 5 of 5 | | Comments: | | | | 4. | Question : | (TCOs 1, 5) Which of the following are the three broad categories of discretionary benefits? | | | Student Answer: | | welfare practices, services, paid time-off | | | | protection programs, paid time-off, services | | | | paid time-off, welfare practices, protection programs | | | | services, protection programs, welfare practices | | Instructor Explanation: | Textbook pg. 7 | | | | Points Received: | 5 of 5 | | Comments: | | | | 5. | Question : | (TCOs 1, 5) Broadbanding is characterized by which of the following? | | | Student Answer: | | flatter, less hierarchical corporation structures | | | | expanding, less hierarchical corporation...
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... 4 Importance of Management Information System for Hospitality and Tourism Industry 6 Use of IT System in an Organization to attain Competitive Advantage 7 Type of Database and Data warehousing in Tourism and Hospitality 9 Use of E-Commerce and MIS in the Industry 11 System Design Requirements of Tourism and Hospitality Business 14 Use of IT to Support Customer Relation Management 16 Role of Enterprise Resource Planning in Tourism and Hospitality 18 IT Security Issues within the Tourism and Hospitality Industry 20 Ethical and Privacy Issues on Use and Storage of Data. 21 REFERENCES 23 Introduction to the Project The hospitality industry includes a broad category of fields within the service industry including restaurants, theme parks, lodging and additional fields within the tourism industry. The basic purpose of this...
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...Beijing, China Abstract With globalization, countries are more connected than before by trading flows, which amounts to at least 36 trillion dollars today. Interestingly, around 30{60 percents of exports consist of intermediate products in global. Therefore, the trade flow network of particular product with high added values can be regarded as value chains. The problem is weather we can discriminate between these products from their unique flow network structure? This paper applies the flow analysis method developed in ecology to 638 trading flow networks of different products. We claim that the allometric scaling exponent g can be used to characterize the degree of hierarchicality of a flow network, i.e., whether the trading products flow on long hierarchical chains. Then, it is pointed out that the flow networks of products with higher added values and complexity like machinary, transport equipment etc. have larger exponents, meaning that their trade flow networks are more hierarchical. As a result, without the extra data like global input-output table, we can identify the product categories with higher complexity, and the relative importance of a country in the global value chain by the trading network solely. Citation: Shi P, Zhang J, Yang B, Luo J (2014) Hierarchicality of Trade Flow Networks Reveals Complexity of Products. PLoS ONE 9(6): e98247. doi:10.1371/journal. pone.0098247 Editor: Dante R. Chialvo, National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET)., Argentina...
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...November 17, 2012 Harvard Case Analysis The Apex Corporation, though profitable was lousily managed. It lacked structure and would sooner or later lose control of its laxed work force and eventually lose profits. The problems facing Apex lay in several areas. (1) Customer serviced needed much improvement; customers found Apex to be slow in responding or not responding at all. (2) The hours that key employees kept were not in tune with customer needs. (3) Apex functioned as a reactionary company rather than a potential leader in the cellular carrier industry. Some alternative actions Apex Corporation needed were restructuring of its organizational structure, in an attempt to achieve maximum proficiency, the CEO implemented a circular structure to create a non hierarchal organization so information could flow freely between the organization and its environment. However employees could not relate to the circular structure. The circular structure confused current and new employees because it lacked clarity as to who made decisions; employees didn’t know how they were being evaluated. It did not improved customer service or the view employees had of the customer. The Horizontal structure was nonresponsive with regards to employees and it was inadequate. What was needed was the ability to control all departments of the company. Innovative structures would not work. Apex needed to return to traditional business management of the Hierarchical Functional Structure. Hierarchy...
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...ABSTRACT Online Analytical Processing is a powerful framework for the analysis of organizational data. OLAP is often supported by a logical structure known as a data cube, a multidimen- sional data model that offers an intuitive array-based per- spective of the underlying data. Supporting efficient index- ing facilities for multi-dimensional cube queries is an issue of some complexity. In practice, the difficulty of the in- dexing problem is exacerbated by the existence of attribute hierarchies that sub-divide attributes into aggregation layers of varying granularity. In this paper, we present a hierar- chy and caching framework that supports the efficient and transparent manipulation of attribute hierarchies within a parallel ROLAP environment. Experimental results verify that, when compared to the non-hierarchical case, very little overhead is required to handle streams of arbitrary hierar- chical queries. Categories and Subject Descriptors H.2.7.b [Database Management]: Data Warehouse and Repository; H.2.2.a [DatabaseManagement]: AccessMeth- ods General Terms Algorithms Design Performance Keywords Hierarchies, Caching, Data Cubes, Aggregation, Indexing, OLAP, Granularity, Materialization, Parallelization 1. INTRODUCTION Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) has become an im- portant component of contemporary Decision Support Sys- tems (DSS). Central to OLAP is the data cube, a multidi- mensional data model that presents an intuitive cube-like Permission...
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...Use a Risk Breakdown Structure (RBS) to Understand Your Risks David Hillson, PhD, PMP, FAPM, MIRM, MCMI, Director of Consultancy, Project Management Professional Solutions Limited Introducing the Risk Breakdown Structure (RBS) The risk management process aims to identify and assess risks in order to enable the risks to be understood clearly and managed effectively. The key step linking identification/assessment of risks with their management is understanding. This is, however, the area where the project manager or risk practitioner gets least help from current guidelines or practice standards. There are many commonly used techniques for risk identification (see, for example, the risk management chapter of A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide, Project Management Institute, 2000). These identification techniques, however, tend to produce an unstructured list of risks that often does not directly assist the project manager in knowing where to focus risk management attention. Qualitative assessment can help to prioritize identified risks by estimating probability and impacts, exposing the most significant risks; but this deals with risks one at a time and does not consider possible patterns of risk exposure, and so also does not provide an overall understanding of the risk faced by the project as a whole. In order to understand which areas of the project might require special attention, and whether there are any recurring risk themes, or concentrations...
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...STRATEGIC PLANNING RECOMMENDATIONS Up to this point, CanGo has managed to excel and establish a foothold in the online entertainment industry. In fact, CanGo has recently been recognized by the Hudson Valley Professional Business Association, affirming the fact that CanGo is a company on the rise rather than a small, independent start-up with no expectations. Unfortunately, CanGo has not embraced the concept of strategic planning, which lays out and determines the direction a company plans to take over the next several years. According to John E. Lawlor of Practical Decisions, strategic planning is important from both a macro perspective and a micro perspective. On a macro level, for instance, business (especially ecommerce) is conducted in the global marketplace. Aided by the Internet and rapid improvements in technology, more and more individuals from all over the world have access to the products and services provided by today’s businesses. From a micro point of view, meanwhile, strategic planning will inject a needed sense of purpose and direction to CanGo. With strategic planning, each individual in the organization –from the CEO to the most recent new staff member – will know what products you sell or services you provide, who your target customers are, and how you plan to compete for their attention (Lawlor, 2005). Strategic planning would also clearly define a set of realistic short-term and long-term goals for the company while communicating those goals clearly to...
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...ARTICLE IN PRESS Int. J. Production Economics 106 (2007) 323–345 www.elsevier.com/locate/ijpe Organizational structures and the performance of supply chain management Soo Wook Kimà College of Business Administration, Seoul National University, San 56-1, Sillim-dong, Kwanak-gu, Seoul, Republic of Korea Accepted 12 July 2006 Available online 26 September 2006 Abstract The objective of this paper is to suggest a set of best organization structures for efficient supply chain management. For this, this paper derives organization types for supply chain management according to the formalization and centralization level of an independent department responsible for supply chain management (SCM) activities, and hierarchical relationship in organizational position and operational responsibility between the SCM department and existing other functional departments. And then, this paper identifies organizational characteristics, which have significant influences on SCM performance by investigating the difference in performance across the proposed organization types. From the results of empirical test, this paper finds that even though too excessive formalization and centralization of the SCM department within a firm may interrupt complete SC integration and performance improvement, a certain range of control by the SCM department is inevitable to build the fundamentals of integrated supply chain management, and thus the temporary pursuit of intensive control focused organization type such...
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...Bureaucracy Observed (An Experience-Based Analysis) (An Experience-Based Analysis) Joshua A Ward University of Maryland University College Author’s Note This paper was prepared for MGMT 610 9045 Organizational Theory (2615), taught by Professor Matthews. According to German sociologist, political economist, administrative scholar, and historian Max Weber, bureaucracy is “a particular type of administrative structure developed through rational legal authority.” (Swanson, 2013) His six major principles have formed the foundation for understanding bureaucracy since their inception. They include the idea that a bureaucracy must consist of a formal hierarchical structure, i.e., each level controls the level below it and is controlled by the level above. Organization by functional specialty is key, work must be performed by specialists, and those specialists are organized into units based on the type of work they do of the skills they possess. Bureaucracy is purposely impersonal, with the major idea being that all employees and customers must and should be treated equally, with no organizational decision influenced or based on individual differences. Also, employment in a bureaucracy should be based primarily on technical qualifications, with the most consideration given to a potential employee who is most qualified, once again, without any consideration given to personal preference. From personal experience, the United States military is a prime example of bureaucracy...
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...Instructor: Dr. Carmine P. Gibaldi Student: Sammy Alnajm Implementing Teams at AAL and IPS Major Players: Dick Gunderson: The president of AAL who was appointed in 1985 from another insurance organization. Looking at the trends in the insurance industry Dick was convinced that AAL needs to cut costs by $50 million in order to stay competitive in the market. The only solution to the problem according to him was organizational transformation. Jerome Laubenstein: Former marketing executive was brought in as the new IPS department head for his remarkable participatory style. He was the key figure in designing and implementing the new organizational change. Jerome along with a team of five individuals, which he had handpicked, was responsible for making the company more customers driven and also downsizing it. Major Issues: The case discusses about the process by which Insurance Product Services (IPS) one of the departments of Aid Association for Lutherans (AAL) was transformed from traditional hierarchical structured to team based organization. The need for change at IPS was because the management felt AAL was not customer centric and the skills & abilities of the employees were untapped. Since the organization was hierarchical in nature the decisions were being framed at higher levels and people actually associated with the problems were not being consulted. The new vision of the IPS was to be a flat organization with fewer levels of supervisions where customers will be...
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...UNIVERSITY OF HELSINKI DEPARTMENT OF FOREST ECONOMICS Environmental Marketing Strategy and its Implementation in Forest Industries Jari Kärnä Academic Dissertation To be presented, with the permission of the Faculty of Agriculture and Forestry of the University of Helsinki for public defence in Auditorium XII of the University main building Aleksanterinkatu 5, on Friday 11th April 2003 at 12 o'clock. Environmental Marketing Strategy and its Implementation in Forest Industries Academic Dissertation Opponent: Professor Juha S. Niemelä Seinäjoki Institute for Rural Research and Training University of Helsinki juha.s.niemela@helsinki.fi Supervisor: Professor Heikki Juslin Department of Forest Economics University of Helsinki heikki.juslin@helsinki.fi Pre-examiners: Professor Hanna Pesonen School of Business and Economics University of Jyväskylä hpesonen@tase.jyu.fi Professor Harri Westermarck Department of Economics University of Helsinki harri.westermarck@helsinki.fi Author's address: Jari Kärnä Finnish Forest Research Institute, Vantaa Research Centre PO Box 18, FIN-01301 Vantaa jari.karna@metla.fi ISBN 952-10-0963-2 (paperback) ISBN 952-10-0964-0 (pdf) ISSN 1236-6226 http://ethesis.helsinki.fi Hakapaino, Helsinki 2003 2 Abstrakti Väitöskirja käsittelee ympäristöasioiden integrointia metsäteollisuusyritysten ja heidän teollisten asiakkaidensa markkinoinnin suunnitteluun. Tutkimus koostuu neljästä julkaistusta ja kahdesta julkaistavaksi...
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...of activities and processes in an organisation and specifies the roles of these in achieving goals and objectives of the organisation. According to (Mullins, 2009), a good structure is highly important due to the fact that decisions on structure are primary strategic decisions which can make or break an organisation. One important aspect of a good structure is the human element. Organisation structure should be designed so as to encourage employees and increase the morale and job satisfaction of organisation members which will result to overall organisation efficiency. (Mullins, 2006) describes nine basic considerations in the design of organisation structure. The fundamental step is to define organisational objectives to enable further analysis and comparisons of other forms of structure. Clarification of objectives A clear definition of objectives is vital to provide a framework for the design of structure of an organisation. Organisation objectives provide fundamental schemes for division of labour and creation of group units and sub units. Clearly stated aims and objectives will assist in decisions on the strategy and structural dimension to employ to achieve organisational objectives. Task and element functions Certain functions must be performed in order to produce a good or service, from the development of the good or service to finance of resources used in the complete processing. These functions are referred to as the task functions. The results of the task functions...
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...Part 1 (Short Response) 1- How do differing perspective (society, managers and employee) affect the views of compensation? • Societal perspective: compensation is viewed as a measure of justice as well as a cause of increased taxes and price increases. • Managers: view compensation as a major expense and a means to influence employee behaviour. • Employees: view compensation as a return in an exchange with their employer, an entitlement, or a reward. 2- Explain the difference between base pay and performance pay. • Base pay: Base pay-wage or salary is the monetary compensation an employee receives for the work performed. For example, the base wage for machine operators may be $18 an hour but some individual operators might receive more because of their experience. • Incentives (or variable pay): Incentives tie pay increases directly to performance. It differs from merit increases. Incentives do not increase the base wage, and must be earned each pay period. The potential size of the incentive payment generally will be known beforehand. 3- What are the three tests used to determine whether a pay strategy is a source of competitive advantage? Are these tests difficult to pass? Can compensation be a source of competitive advantage? • Equity Theory: Fairness Equity theory focuses on how employees compare their work, qualifications, and pay to those of others. • Tournament Theory: Motivation and Performance Tournament theory suggests that the greater...
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