Resilience in supplier management in energy industry

Abstract. Currently, there is variation and development need in Finnish companies how prepared and resilient they are against crisis and disruptions. In the energy industry, supply chain resilience (SCRes) is a critical part of strategic management due to its critical role in society and effect on competitiveness. Disruption effects to supply chain (SC) performance are minimized by proactive risk management and ensuring business continuity by different capabilities in buyer company and suppliers. Crisis and disruptions are not completely predictable or preventable and different capabilities ensure fast recovery from disruptions and crisis. The aim of this research is to define how SCRes can be managed and developed by supplier relationship management in the energy industry in Finland. The research consists of a literature review and empirical study implemented as qualitative research using a semi-structured interview. The research target is achieved by research questions defined below: RQ1: How can SCRes be defined in an energy industry context? RQ2: How to manage SCRes? RQ3: What capabilities are critical to be considered to ensure high SCRes in the energy industry in Finland? RQ4: How to improve SCRes in the energy industry in Finland? The key findings indicate that SCRes needs to be continuously assessed and improved by several intra-organizational and inter-organizational collaborative capabilities. Business Continuity Plan needs to be implemented proactively in collaboration with suppliers and other networks. SCRes is managed through the whole SC by systematic and proactive supplier relationship management (SRM). As the research is a wide interview study, the findings of this research can be utilized for other industrial fields by management and improvement of SCRes. It needs to be considered that the findings are subjective as done by one researcher.Alihankkijoiden resilienssiarviointi energiateollisuudessa. Tiivistelmä. Toimitusketjun resilienssi vaihtelee suomalaisissa yrityksissä ja siinä on kehitettävää sen mukaan, miten varautuneita ja kriisinkestäviä yritykset ovat. Energiateollisuudessa toimitusketjun resilienssi on kriittinen osa strategista johtamista yhteiskuntakriittisyyden ja kilpailukyvyn vaikutuksen vuoksi. Häiriöiden vaikutukset toimitusketjuun minimoidaan proaktiivisella riskienhallinnalla ja varmistamalla liiketoiminnan jatkuvuus erilaisilla kyvykkyyksillä. Kriisejä ja häiriöitä ei voida täysin ennustaa tai estää, joten erilaisia kyvykkyydet varmistavat nopean toipumisen kriiseistä. Tämän diplomityön tavoite oli selvittää, miten toimitusketjun resilienssiä voidaan johtaa ja kehittää toimittajasuhteiden hallinnan kautta energiateollisuudessa Suomessa. Tutkimus koostuu kirjallisuuskatsauksesta ja empiirisestä tutkimuksesta, joka on toteutettu laadullisena tutkimuksena puolistrukturoitujen haastatteluiden avulla. Tutkimuksen tavoitteet saavutetaan seuraavilla tutkimuskysymyksillä: TK1: Miten toimitusketjun resilienssi määritellään energiateollisuudessa? TK2: Miten toimitusketjun resilienssiä johdetaan? TK3: Mitkä tekijät ovat kriittisiä toimitusketjun korkean resilienssin varmistamisessa energiateollisuudessa Suomessa? TK4: Miten toimitusketjun resilienssiä voidaan kehittää energiateollisuudessa Suomessa? Keskeisimmät löydökset osoittavat, että toimitusketjun resilienssiä tulee parantaa jatkuvasti yritysten sisäisten kyvykkyyksien ja yritysten välisten, yhteistyöllä vahvistettavien kyvykkyyksien kautta. Liiketoiminnan jatkuvuussuunnitelma otetaan käyttöön proaktiivisesti yhteistyössä toimittajien ja muiden sidosryhmien kanssa. Toimitusketjun resilienssiä johdetaan koko toimitusketjun matkalla systemaattisen ja proaktiivisen toimittajahallinnan kautta. Koska kyseessä on laaja haastattelututkimus, löydöksiä voidaan soveltaa myös muille teollisuuden aloille toimitusketjun resilienssin johtamiseen ja kehittämiseen. On otettava huomioon, että löydökset ovat subjektiivisia yhden tutkijan tekemiä löydöksiä

Opening pousada da Serra da Estrela in Covilhã: a two-way impact - studying the value chain

A Work Project, presented as part of the requirements for the Award of a Masters Degree in Management from the NOVA – School of Business and Economics“Opening Pousada da Serra da Estrela in Covilhã: A Two-Way Impact –Studying the Value Chain” aims at analyzing how the hotel’s value chain can be improved with local resources and mutual beneficial relationships in Covilhã. Research on hospitality management and value chain was done and two meetings were held with Grupo Pestana Pousadas and many others local agents. Important relationships need to be established, especially for marketing, procurement, HR and maintenance, through resources sharing. All stakeholders must cooperate to create a better touristic product and make the hotel a region’s point of interest, attracting customers to the destination

BRAHMA(+): A Framework for Resource Scaling of Streaming and ASAP Time-Varying Workflows

Automatic scaling of complex software-as-a-service application workflows is one of the most important problems concerning resource management in clouds. In this paper, we study the automatic workflow resource scaling problem for streaming and ASAP workflows, and its time-varying variant where the workflow resource requirements change over time. Service components of streaming workflows execute concurrently while those of ASAP workflows execute sequentially. We propose an intelligent framework, BRAHMA(+), which possesses the capability to learn the workflow behavior and construct a knowledge base that serves as its decision making engine. The proposed resource provisioning algorithms leverage this learned information curated in the knowledge base to perform informed and intelligent scaling decisions. Additionally, BRAHMA(+) employs the use of online-learning strategies to keep the knowledge base up-to-date, thereby accommodating the changes in the workflow resource requirements over time. We evaluate the proposed algorithms using CloudSim simulations. Results on streaming and ASAP workflows, with both static and time-varying resource requirements show that the proposed algorithms are effective and produce good cost-quality trade-offs. The proactive and hybrid algorithms meet the service level agreements and restrict deadline violations to a small fraction (3%-5% in the considered scenarios), while only suffering a marginal increase in average cost per component compared to the described baseline algorithms

Democratic Dissolution: Radical Experimentation in State Takeovers of Local Governments

While state interventions to stabilize the finances of struggling municipalities date back to the Great Depression, the current fiscal crisis has brought a startling escalation in the powers granted to state intervention authorities. Aptly observed by Abby Goodnough in The New York Times, cities and states have tried “myriad ways of righting their fiscal ships as the recession plods on,” but until very recently, “locking the mayor out of City Hall [was] generally not one of them.” In 2010 and 2011, Michigan and Rhode Island, which have been watched closely by other states, dramatically reformed their laws governing state receiverships for local governments in fiscal crisis. The new legislation provided for suspension and displacement of local government in faltering cities during the period of intervention, replacing all elected local officials with a single state appointee. Such interventions leave the legal corporation of the city and its budget intact: the city’s borders do not change, regardless of the revenue potential and service costs of that land base, and the city must pay its own bills. Yet the city’s power to govern that territory and budget is drawn up to the state’s executive branch. The city’s elected officials and its governing charter are set aside for an unspecified period of years. This Article analyzes the new state receivership legislation in Michigan and Rhode Island and offers the concept of democratic dissolution to help interpret this new development. While the new laws are premised on a genuinely urgent and difficult public policy problem—local governments overwhelmed by debt they cannot service and bills they cannot pay—this Article argues that the reforms do both too little and too much. To cure the underlying structural causes of fiscal crisis, the laws do next to nothing; to improve local management, the laws enact a punishing cancelation of local democracy. For Michigan, Rhode Island, and the other states watching them, I propose legal reforms that more moderately balance the seriousness of the challenges of local fiscal stabilization with the importance of local democracy

Income insurance as a risk management tool after 2013 CAP reforms?

The ecosystem and the economic subsystem are interlinked. In fact, it is the overconsumption of scarce resources or the overproduction of bad outputs at economic system level that causes a great part of the imbalances at the ecosystem level. Some imbalances do not originate at the economic system level, but are due to external factors. Given the possibility of external shocks, respecting static sustainability thresholds is not a guarantee for system sustainability. In a dynamic setting, the concept of resilience is therefore helpful. In this paper we show how this concept can complement the traditional efficiency approach to come to a sustainable value creating economic system.Income volatility, Income insurance, Expert elicitation, Price insurance, Risk and Uncertainty,

National Evaluation of the Capacity Building Programme in English Local Government: Annex 4: Follow On Study of Progress in Seven Case Study Improvement Partnerships

This report is one of a series of outputs from the national evaluation of the Capacity Building Programme for local government in England (CBP), being undertaken by a team of researchers at the Policy Research Institute (PRI) at Leeds Metropolitan University and the Cities Research Unit at the University of West of England. This report summarises the findings from the second phase of fieldwork with regional and sub-regional Improvement Partnerships, established to facilitate capacity building and improvement activity in local authorities. The research underpinning this report was undertaken in seven case study Improvement Partnerships (see Section 2) in October and November 2006 and follows a similar – baseline – exercise undertaken during the same period during 2005. It thus both draws on the earlier research (see Section 3) and identifies evidence of progress and impact (see Section 10) since the baseline phase

Does Confidential Proxy Voting Matter?

Confidential voting in corporate proxies is a principal recommendation in activist institutional investors' guidelines for corporate governance reforms. This paper examines the impact of the adoption of confidential voting on proposal outcomes through a panel data set of shareholder and management proposals submitted from 1986-98 to 130 firms that adopted confidential voting in those years. Institutional investors promoting confidential voting maintain that private sector institutions have conflicts of interest that prevent them from voting against management even though to do so would maximize the value of their shares; they contend that anonymous ballots will enable such investors to vote their true interest, and thereby anticipate reduced support for management proposals and increased support for shareholder proposals. The paper finds, contrary to confidential voting advocates' expectations, that adoption of confidential voting has no significant effect on voting outcomes. Voting outcomes are best explained by proposal type; neither institutional nor insider ownership, nor prior performance, significantly affect the level of support a proposal receives. Moreover, the conflict of interest hypothesis is not supported in the data, as private institutional holdings post-adoption of the voting reform do not affect the support level for proposals. Confidential voting also does not affect firms' stock performance. The results suggest that institutional investor initiatives directed at confidential voting are not a fruitful allocation of investors' resources

Current policy issues in the governance of the European patent system

The European Parliament has been working towards building a discussion platform and a resource for further policy actions in the field of intellectual property rights. The Science and Technology Options Assessment Panel has set the goal of further enlarging the area of investigation in light of recent policy developments at the European level. In particular, the current study covers current policy issues in the governance of the European patent system, such as the backlog issue, the enhancement of patent awareness within the European Parliament, patent enforcement, the regional dimension of intellectual property in Europe, patents and standardisation, the use of existing patents, and patents and competition. These issues were discussed in the conference with stakeholders from European to national patent offices, from private to public sector actors. As a result of the conference, it was stated the need for an IP strategy for Europ