Problem solving and the co-ordination of innovative activities

In the context of increasingly globalized markets, ever more complex supply chains and international manufacturing networks, corporate decision-making processes involve more and more actors, variables and criteria. This is a challenge for corporate head quarters. Many have argued that the role once attributed to the integrated innovative organisation and its R&D laboratories is increasingly associated with the functioning of networks of specialised innovators. The aim of this paper is to argue that the role of large firms may have changed, but it is far from disappeared. It looks at the interplay of increasing knowledge specialisation, the development of products of increasing complexity that perform a widening range of functionalities, and the emergence and diffusion of new design strategies for both products and organisations, namely modularity. The emergence of modularity as a product and organisational design strategy is clearly connected to recent trends in organisational design. Modularity would allow the decoupling of complex artifacts into simpler, self-contained modules. Each module would, at the extreme, become the sole business of a specialised trade. This paper builds upon the idea that there are cognitive limits to this process of modularisation: what kinds of problems firms solve, and how they solve them, set limits to the extent of division of labour among firms. We draw implications of such limits for both management and economic theory.large firms, knowledge specialisation, complex products, modularity,

The boomerang returns? Accounting for the impact of uncertainties on the dynamics of remanufacturing systems

Recent years have witnessed companies abandon traditional open-loop supply chain structures in favour of closed-loop variants, in a bid to mitigate environmental impacts and exploit economic opportunities. Central to the closed-loop paradigm is remanufacturing: the restoration of used products to useful life. While this operational model has huge potential to extend product life-cycles, the collection and recovery processes diminish the effectiveness of existing control mechanisms for open-loop systems. We systematically review the literature in the field of closed-loop supply chain dynamics, which explores the time-varying interactions of material and information flows in the different elements of remanufacturing supply chains. We supplement this with further reviews of what we call the three ‘pillars’ of such systems, i.e. forecasting, collection, and inventory and production control. This provides us with an interdisciplinary lens to investigate how a ‘boomerang’ effect (i.e. sale, consumption, and return processes) impacts on the behaviour of the closed-loop system and to understand how it can be controlled. To facilitate this, we contrast closed-loop supply chain dynamics research to the well-developed research in each pillar; explore how different disciplines have accommodated the supply, process, demand, and control uncertainties; and provide insights for future research on the dynamics of remanufacturing systems

Compensating Whom For What? Reconsidering the Composition of Public Spending

This paper reports the preliminary work under way to analyse the composition of public spending in response to increased economic openness in the advanced industrial societies over recent decades. The compensation hypothesis predicts that public spending will rise in response to greater openness, especially trade competition. The globalization hypothesis predicts that public spending will be constrained by increased capital market openness. Our research design distinguishes between four aspects of public spending. First it considers spending targeted at producer as opposed to labour market interests. It further distinguishes between short-term transfer spending and longer-term investment spending, all of which have aspects of compensation spending to them. The principal focus of the research project is to analyse to what degree left-right partisanship makes a difference to spending effort, and to what degree the patterns vary between different varieties of capitalism. Drawing mainly on OECD data for the period since 1980, the modelling and analysis, using pooled time-series cross-sectional data with an error correction model, is as yet at a relatively early stage. Preliminary results suggest that neither trade nor capital market openness is associated with increase spending efforts in the manner anticipated by the compensation hypothesis. A number of lines of further inquiry are identified.

Towards product platform introduction: optimising commonality of components

Companies that design and manufacture products for a wide range of related applications need to offer the right product for each use. A platform design strategy allows designing the product range based on product platforms, where some of the components and systems are common across the range whereas other components are individual for each product variant. This paper presents the problems that a company faces when trying to introduce a platform strategy and outlines a method to find suitable components to be made common. The method is shown with a simple case. The approach uses fuzzy logic to obtain a suitable criterion to assess the overall value of the product line and a genetic algorithm for finding the set of components to be made commo

Evaluating Enterprize Delivery Using the TYPUS Metrics and the KILT Mode

The goal of this work is the technical, ecological, environmental and social examination of the life-cycle (LC) of any product (consumable, service, production) using the TYPUS metrics and the KILT model. The life-cycle starts when the idea of a product is born and lasts until complete dismissal through design, implementation and operation, etc. In the first phases requirements’ specification, analysis, several design steps (global plan, detailed design, assembly design, etc.) are followed by part manufacturing, assembly, testing, diagnostics and operation, advertisement, service, maintenance, etc. Then finally disassembly and dismissal are coming, but dismissal can be substituted by re-cycling (e.g. melting the metals) or re-use (used parts applications). Qualitative and quantitative evaluations of enterprise results are supported by the new models and metrics

From the Theory of the Firm to FDI and Internalisation: A Survey

This paper surveys recent contributions on the Internalisation issue, based on different theories of the firm, to show how the make-or-buy decision, at an international level, has been assessed through the opening up of the “black box” - traditionally explored by the theorists of the firm – and the simultaneous endogenization of the market environment – as in the International Economics tradition. In particular, we consider three Archetypes – Grossman-Hart-Moore treatment of hold-up and contractual incompleteness, Holmstrom-Milgrom view of the firm as an incentive system, Aghion-Tirole conceptualisation of formal and real authority in organisations – and show how they have been embedded in industry and general equilibrium models of FDI to explain the boundaries of global firms.FDI, Internalisation, International Economics, Incomplete contracts

Life-cycle assessment of buildings: a Review

Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA) is one of various management tools for evaluating environmental concerns. This paper reviews LCA from a buildings perspective. It highlights the need for its use within the building sector, and the importance of LCA as a decision making support tool. It discusses LCA methodologies and applications within the building sector, reviewing some of the life-cycle studies applied to buildings or building materials and component combinations within the last fifteen years in Europe and the United States. It highlights the problems of a lack of an internationally comparable and agreed data inventory and assessment methodology which hinder the application of LCA within the building industry. It identifies key areas for future research as (i) the whole process of construction, (ii) the relative weighting of different environmental impacts and (iii) applications in developing countries