Impact of the Operations Manager's dual role on inventory policy

In modern corporations, the Operations Manager’s role in defining of firm’s strategy is becoming more important. In this paper we describe how firms can use this tendency for Operations Managers to make strategic decisions as a mechanism to prevent inventory mismanagement. These managers have incentives to speculate with inventory cost reductions, thereby avoiding sharp reductions in a single period, because it would hinder further reductions in the future. Remarkably, firms may prevent such behavior by stimulating the Operations Managers’ strategic orientation, without losing sight of inventory-efficient management

Managerial turnover and worker turnover

We study the influence of the manager's degree of consolidation within the firm over the firm's labor policy. We argue that non-consolidated (recently-appointed) managers are more worried about short-term results than consolidated managers are. This feature leads the former to bias the labor contracting favoring short-term contracts. This has two main consequences. First, a higher variation in the number of workers hired in each period. And second, a lower increase in unitary labor costs. To contrast these results, we use a database of 1.054 Spanish companies during the period (1994-98), and analyze their managerial turnover as well as their corresponding variation in the number of workers and in unitary labor costs. The theoretical results are confirmed, especially for highly-productive R and D-intensive firms

MANAGERIAL TURNOVER AND WORKER TURNOVER

We study the influence of the manager's degree of consolidation within the firm over the firm's labor policy. We argue that non-consolidated (recently-appointed) managers are more worried about short-term results than consolidated managers are. This feature leads the former to bias the labor contracting favoring short-term contracts. This has two main consequences. First, a higher variation in the number of workers hired in each period. And second, a lower increase in unitary labor costs. To contrast these results, we use a database of 1.054 Spanish companies during the period (1994-98), and analyze their managerial turnover as well as their corresponding variation in the number of workers and in unitary labor costs. The theoretical results are confirmed, especially for highly-productive (R&D-intensive) firms.

Impact of the Operations Manager's dual role on inventory policy

In modern corporations, the Operations Manager’s role in defining of firm’s strategy is becoming more important. In this paper we describe how firms can use this tendency for Operations Managers to make strategic decisions as a mechanism to prevent inventory mismanagement. These managers have incentives to speculate with inventory cost reductions, thereby avoiding sharp reductions in a single period, because it would hinder further reductions in the future. Remarkably, firms may prevent such behavior by stimulating the Operations Managers’ strategic orientation, without losing sight of inventory-efficient management.

Buyer-supplier relationships influence on traceability implementation in the vegetable industry

The increasing importance of food safety has made traceability a crucial issue in the agri-business industry. In this article, we have analysed the factors that shape the buyer-supplier relationships, and how they influence the traceability of raw materials. In order to do so, first, we have made a literature review to develop an analytical framework. Next, we have carried out four case studies on vegetable firms with the purpose of uncovering the variables that characterise buyer-supplier relationships, and its influence on traceability in this sector. Finally, we have compared the observed links with the conceptual framework derived from the literature in order to build and improved model

Lagging behind versus advancing too fast? identifying gaps research in supply chain

The objective of our work is to analyze the evolution and actual trends of research in Supply Chain Management (SCM). We pretend to show how the different topics have been methodologically studied, and to determine how the advent of the so-called 'New Economy' has influenced SCM research. To get this objective, we carry out a literature review of twelve refereed journals in the Operations Management (OM) area for the period 1995-2001. Statistical tools are used to analyze the obtained information

Monitoring, Operational Manager Efforts and Inventory Policy

Operations managers are becoming more important in modern corporations. They do not only care on firms’ inventory management but also they are involved in firms’ strategic decisions. Within this setting we ask about the consequences in the inventory policy of this new role undertaken by these managers. To do so, we develop a model where a firm’s Operations Manager can devote some efforts to develop non-inventory related activities. These efforts, although non-verifiable, may be known with a certain probability if the owner monitors them. Interestingly, by monitoring these efforts, a firm’s owner may end up stimulating Operations Manager to achieve steep inventory cost reductions in the short-term. Basic idea is that Operations Manager, in general, avoids reducing inventory costs significantly in one period because this makes additional cost cuts difficult which, in turn, reduce expected future inventory-related retribution. However, by compensating those non-inventory-related efforts may offset these losses. Thus, although Operations Managers in modern corporations carry out non-inventory related responsibilities, this may bring about some benefits on inventory costs reduction

Operations manager turnover and inventory fluctuations

We argue that a recently appointed operations manager deploys a higher variability inventory policy than a high-tenure operations manager does. This contention is supported by the idea that the former manager determines the production schedule by focusing on the current-period demand for information, while the latter also incorporates her expectations over future demand shocks. A second theoretical outcome of this study is that the variability of inventory and of the number of firm's employees are positively correlated, especially in firms with a recently appointed operational manager. Such managers use cojointly inventory and temporary workers to buffer demand shocks more often than high-tenure managers. Empirical support for these propositions was gathered from two databases of Spanish manufacturing firms.Publicad

Consolidación del director general y consecuencias en la política laboral de las empresas

El objetivo de este articulo es analizar las consecuencias de las variaciones en el grado de consolidación de un gerente en la política de contratación de trabajadores en la empresa. Presentamos un modelo teórico del que se deduce la existencia de un sesgo hacia el largo plazo en la duración de los contratos laborales que defme un gerente consolidado, especialmente si gestiona una empresa que invierte intensivamente en I + D. Utilizando una base de datos compuesta por 1.008 empresas españolas durante el período 1994-1998 contrastamos esta hipótesis en base a una serie de consecuencias que de ella se deducen. En particular, y de forma consistente con la teoría, encontramos que un gerente consolidado de una empresa intensiva en I + D, decide variar menos el número de trabajadores, y consigue incrementar más la productividad laboral de éstos que un gerente poco consolidado.-----------------------------------------------------------------In this article we analyze the changes in the labor hiring policy due to variations in the managerial consolidation within the frrm. We build up a theoretical model to conclude the existence of a long-term bias in the labor hiring policy defined by consolidated managers, especially ifthey manage R&D-intensive frrms. We contrast this fmding making use of a sample of 1.008 Spanish firms during the period 1994-98. We find, consistently with the theory, that a consolidated manager of a R&D-intensive firm changes less the number of firm's employees and achieves a higher increase in the labor productivity in comparison to a recently-appointed one.Los autores quieren agradecer muy especialmente los comentarios del evaluador. Una versión de este trabajo fue presentada en el IV Encuentro de Economía Aplicada, Reus (2001), y en el 1 Encuentro de Economía Industrial, Barcelona (2001). Hay que significar que este artículo se ha beneficiado de los fondos del proyecto PB97-0089 (DGES). Obvia decir que todos los errores son de la entera responsabilidad de los autores.Publicad

The value of SKU rationalization: the pooling effect under suboptimal inventory policies

Managing product variety is a widely recognized challenge. Several approaches to this rely on the "pooling effect", the reduction of uncertainty that occurs when individual demands are aggregated. This can occur through reduction of number of products orSKUs, through postponement of differentiation, or in other ways. These approaches are by now well-known and widely applied in practice. However, theoretical analyses of the pooling effect always assume that one has an optimal inventory policy before and after pooling. If this is not the case, how does that affect the value of pooling? This paper analyses the benefits of pooling in terms of costs and service level under optimal and suboptimal policies and proposes a simple framework to analyze the trade-off between implementing pooling and improving inventory policy. We show there is always a range of current inventory levels within which pooling is better and beyond whichoptimizing inventory policy is better. We analyze how this range varies with the problem parameters and illustrate these findings using highly erratic empirical demand data