摘要:

AbstractWe examine a model of the relationships among sources and outcomes of competitive advantage. The model is integrative across business functions and research disciplines. Functional area competencies are considered as sources of advantage, and three competency constructs are introduced: marketing competency, product design and development (innovation) competency, and manufacturing competency. Each functional area construct is defined as the sum of the performance on 31 competitive items, weighted by importance and extent of responsibility. Relationships between the competency constructs (and their interactions) with performance outcomes such as ROI and market share are analyzed. Results from this exploratory study suggest that innovation is a key source of competitive advantage.

ISSN:0011-7315    

DOI:10.1111/j.1540-5915.1994.tb01865.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1994

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

AbstractProbabilistic knowledge is an important input to the analysis of many decisions, and may be required for long‐range forecasting, classical decision analysis, influence diagrams, fault tree analysis, and expert systems. If objective probabilities cannot be calculated, it is vital that decision makers use the best available subjective measures of probability. Standard mathematical theory allows the analyst several choices in framing subjective probability assessments. When assessing cause‐effect probabilities, the three choices are causal, diagnostic, and joint probabilities. Choosing among these is difficult in light of conflicting reports that, due to cognitive heuristics, probability judgment may be biased in various poorly understood ways. For example, it has been reported that, when judging causal probabilities, people are subject to the causal information bias, and thus upwardly revise their prior probabilities more than when judging diagnostic probabilities. On the other hand, it has also been reported that in some cases, people do not take proper account of new evidence, which results in under‐revision of prior probabilities. Furthermore it has been reported that, when assessing joint probabilities, people are subject to the conjunction fallacy, and thus often judge a joint probability to be higher than one of the two corresponding marginal probabilities. Our research compares the relative effects of these biases in a laboratory setting: we present new empirical results comparing the test‐retest reliabilities and under(over) revision rates of causal, diagnostic, and joint probabilities. Our results suggest that the tendency to both under‐revise and over‐revise prior probabilities is greatest when judging diagnostic probabilities, as opposed to either causal or joint probabilities. Furthermore our results suggest that joint probability judgment is more reliable than either causal or diagnostic probabili

ISSN:0011-7315    

DOI:10.1111/j.1540-5915.1994.tb01866.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1994

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

AbstractWe present a framework for managing vital customer priorities in job‐shop manufacturing environments. We introduce the notion of attaining near‐perfect on‐time delivery service to a small portion of the firm's customers who contribute to a substantial portion of its sales revenue and profits. Consequently we postulate that appropriate order review and release (ORR) policies, along with the dispatching rules used to schedule customer orders, can be combined effectively to achieve the desired customer service results. Several dispatching rules specifically designed for this study are tested under different operating environments in order to derive the recommended set of ORR and dispatching rule policies. Capacity‐based ORR procedures, in conjunction with dispatching rules that pace a job's progress through different operations in its route, provide the best overall performance. The nature of trade‐offs inherent in managing the priorities of vitally important customers are also identified and presented in the form of managerial recommendations that can be used to enhance a job shop's overall pe

ISSN:0011-7315    

DOI:10.1111/j.1540-5915.1994.tb01867.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1994

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

AbstractA constant concern of management information systems (MIS) researchers and practitioners has been improving user satisfaction with the information services function (USISF). Due to the growth of end‐user computing, decentralization, and alternative sources of supply, an organization's information services function (ISF) is now faced with serving customers that possess substantial discretion in their use and purchase of information systems (IS) services. This increasingly market‐oriented environment demands sensitivity to IS customers' expectations and perceived value of ISF services. One important source of guidance in such an IS management environment is to look at marketing literature for frameworks that may permit the ISF to more effectively determine and convey the value of their services. Recognizing the need to improve existing MIS measures of user satisfaction with the ISF, this study adapts the SERVQUAL measure from marketing to provide more specific information about user satisfaction with the information service function. It was found that, while the three original dimensions of the traditional user information satisfaction (UIS) measure remain strong predictors of overall ISF user satisfaction, two aspects of IS service quality, “reliability” and “empathy,” are also significant predictors. The results suggest that the original dimensions of UIS may not be comprehensive enough to capture the more detailed dimensions of ISF service quality in SERVQUAL, and that the reliability and empathy dimensions of service quality may be needed to supplement the traditional UIS measure in determining user satisfaction with the information services function. Implications for research and practice resulting from these findings ar

ISSN:0011-7315    

DOI:10.1111/j.1540-5915.1994.tb01868.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1994

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

AbstractCustomer access information technologies (CAITs) provide a link between a firm and its customers. Firms invest in CAITs to reduce costs, increase revenues and market share, lock in existing customers, and capture new ones. These benefits, however, are notoriously difficult to measure. This paper proposes an evaluative method for CAIT deployment called value platform analysis, based on a conceptual model drawn from the theory of retail outlet deployment in marketing science. Value platform analysis evaluates the impact of the features of a CAIT, the features of its immediate site, and the features of the larger environment into which it is deployed on the transactions it generates and the resulting business value outcomes. Value platform analysis is then applied in an electronic banking context. Hypotheses regarding the likely impact of automatic teller machine (ATM) functionality, the immediate site's surrounding traffic, the customer demographics, and the number of competitors in the environment on ATM transactions are evaluated both before and after the merger of two regional ATM networks. The results indicate that there are a number of key features influencing ATM performance. Two distinct ATM deployment scenarios emerge: one for servicing a bank's own customers, and another for providing transaction services for customers for a fee. The merger of regional networks impacts each of these scenarios differently.

ISSN:0011-7315    

DOI:10.1111/j.1540-5915.1994.tb01869.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1994

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

AbstractWe assessed the ability of the cognitive fit theory to explain the performance of certain display formats on multiattribute judgment tasks. This theory suggests that for most effective and efficient problem solving to occur, the problem representation and any tools or aids employed should all support the strategies (methods or processes) required to perform that task. The theory was tested by assessing performance with schematic faces, graphs, and tables on a bankruptcy prediction task. Bankruptcy prediction involves integrating a large amount of data (a number of financial indicators over a number of years), as well as referring to ranges and/or levels of financial indicators. Schematic faces provide a cognitive fit with such tasks since the information in a face can be processed holistically; however, they do not permit decision makers to refer to the underlying data. Graphs facilitate a different integrating process; further, they preserve characteristics of the underlying data. Tables, on the other hand, do not aid the decision maker in integrating information; they provide only the underlying data values. It was hypothesized that graphs would provide the best cognitive fit for the bankruptcy prediction task since they permit processing both integrated and discrete data. Participants made judgments with two of the three display formats, at two levels of information load, in a fractional factorial design. The information load manipulation was designed to provide meaningful and meaningful plus redundant information to the decision maker in a test of information load “per se.” The research findings provided substantial support for the theory of cognitive fit. The findings also have implications for the study of information l

ISSN:0011-7315    

DOI:10.1111/j.1540-5915.1994.tb01870.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1994

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

AbstractThe production control system for a shop can be viewed as consisting of three sequential stages, the order‐promising stage, the order‐release stage, and the dispatching (or shop floor) stage. The first stage, wherein a customer's job arrives and is assigned a due date, provides the focus for this research. In particular, the performance of six regression‐based due‐date assignment rules found in the literature is compared with due dates determined by a neural network. The purpose is to see whether neural networks hold any promise for application in this area.For the particular shop and the conditions studied, it is found that the neural network outperforms all six conventional rules according to mean‐absolute‐deviation (MAD) and standard‐deviation‐of‐lateness (SDL) criteria, although for one rule on the latter criterion, the difference is not statistically significant. Further analysis indicates that this conclusion generally holds both when the amount of data available is varied and a second, more structured shop is studied. On a third shop with random routings, the neural network outperforms the best conventional method according to the MAD measure, but results are mixed for the SDL criterion. The superior performance of the neural network leads us also to evaluate a regression model nonlinear in its independent variables, a case not considered in the due‐date literature. The nonlinear model generally outperforms the conventional rules on MAD and SDL. The neural network outperforms the nonlinear model on MAD, while the results for S

ISSN:0011-7315    

DOI:10.1111/j.1540-5915.1994.tb01871.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1994

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

AbstractIf the standard decision analysis approach was applied to a competitive situation, then the decision maker would attempt to assess a subjective probability distribution over all possible actions by the competitors or rivals. However, in assessing this robability distribution, the decision maker would quickly find him/herself in an infinite regress. There is a range of possible dependencies between the decision maker's decision and the rival's action that lead to such a regress. This paper presents an approach to overcoming this infinite regress in performing decision analyses of competitive situations with a “pure” infinite regress. In a pure infinite regress there is a dependency between the decision maker's decision and the rival's choice of action: if the decision maker prefers one alternative to any other, then the rival's actions will reflect a belief by the rival that the preferred alternative is more likely to be the decision maker's decision. The approach builds the decision maker's preferred rank order of alternatives, while simultaneously constructing a consistent model of the rival's beliefs about the decision maker's decis

ISSN:0011-7315    

DOI:10.1111/j.1540-5915.1994.tb01872.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1994

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

AbstractThis paper presents the results of a replication of construct measurement of perceived usefulness and ease of use. This replication extends the work of recent research which examined these constructs through structural equation modeling. This research uses a new data set for two different technologies in conducting the replication of the construct measurement. The results of the construct measurement for perceived usefulness and ease of use in this research are quite consistent with the results reported in recent research with minor variations. Perceived usefulness, and not ease of use, is a determinant of predicted future usage.

ISSN:0011-7315    

DOI:10.1111/j.1540-5915.1994.tb01873.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1994

数据来源: WILEY