Product customisation: an empirical study of competitive advantage and repeat business

Empirical evidence is presented from 24 UK based manufacturing companies, all offering a degree of product customisation, with most having a significant Engineer-to-order (ETO) element. The majority of the companies are SME’s, with the associated limited managerial resources. The evidence addresses the issues of competitive advantage, including a detailed investigation of the strategic importance of repeat business. It contrasts its results with those generally found in the literature and concludes that there are significant differences in the order winners/ qualifiers. In particular, the evidence suggests that customisation is an order qualifier rather than an order winner; as it is increasingly unlikely that competitors will only offer a more standard product. Thus alternative order winners are needed and often price becomes the most significant factor, rather than being a mere order qualifier. Four different types of repeat business are then identified and the strategic importance of repeat business is discussed. It is indicated that for some ETO companies, repeat business is perceived to be an important method to reduce costs and achieve business stability. However, a number of the other companies studied saw repeat business as infeasible and hence need to find other ways to reduce costs and improve company performance measures, such as lead times. Future research to extend this work into a longitudinal study is proposed. Issues to explore are how the importance of repeat business has changed, and how the companies have evolved in terms of the degree of customisation offered versus that offered by their competitors

Managing UIC Medical Center Policies Using DSpace

The University of Illinois at Chicago’s University Archives found that using the DSpace institutional repository software is an effective, if not elegant, solution for the submission, search, and retrieval of a set of vital university records. This case study discusses the process of using the institutional repository to manage the University of Illinois Medical Center’s electronic policies and procedures documents

Business strategy and business history : a review and prospectus

School of Managemen

Perlindungan Hukum Terhadap Investor Dalam Transaksi Saham Tanpa Warkat (Scriptless Trading) Di Pasar Modal

Trade system without documents (scriptless trading) constitutes a new trade system applied in the Indonesia Stock Exchange. Trade without documents is done by computerization. This system not only deals with trade but also with the resolution of the trade itself. In this system, the stocks are changed to electronic data which are saved in computer. Scriptless trading or trade without documents is a trade system which has the mechanism of resolution and storage of stocks electronically. The problems which arise in the implementation of using scriptless trading in the Indonesia Stock Exchange is how about the validity of the transaction of stocks without any documents (scriptless trading) in the Indonesia Stock Exchange and how about the legal protection for investors in scriptless trading in the Indonesian Capital Market

Primary Sources in K–12 Education: Opportunities for Archives

Recent developments in the field of K–12 (kindergarten through twelfth grade) education have made archival resources essential tools for many teachers. Inquiry-based learning, document-based questions, and high stakes standardized testing have converged to make primary resources an important teaching tool in elementary and secondary education. Teaching and testing K–12 students require analysis of primary documents, so that archival records take their place alongside the test tube and the textbook in many American classrooms. These trends represent an opportunity for archives to expand their patron base, establish contacts in the community, contribute to the vitality of public education in their communities, and cultivate the next generation of archives’ users, donors, and supporters. This paper encourages archivists to consider K–12 students and their teachers when planning programs, digital products, and services

Fair Shares for All? The development of needs based governmental funding in education, health and housing

Furthering equity as an achievable public policy objective is based on the ability to assess needs accurately, and distribute resources accordingly. This paper plots the development of the formulae governing resouce allocation in education, health and social housing, and charts their course as a tool with which governments attempted to achieve various objectives. The paper begins by suggesting that allocation systems can be explained through a form of public choice theory. It then charts the development of needs-based resource allocation from its origin in the nineteenth century, through the pre- and post Second World War period, and into the major flowering of needs-based formulae since 1970 - when resources were constrained and attempts were made to push allocation even further down and apply the formulae to smaller units. The conclusion looks at equity, public choice and technical ability as over-riding features governing the development of resource allocation within the English state sector.Resource allocation, funding formulae, geographical equity

Forecast Failure, Expectations Formation, and the Lucas Critique

Since forecast failure is due to unanticipated large shifts in deterministic factors,'sensible' agents should adopt 'robust forecasting rules'. Unless the model coincides with the generating mechanism, one cannot even prove that causal variables will dominate non-causal in forecasting. In such a non-stationary world, 'rational expectations' do not have an epistemologically-sound basis: agents cannot know how all relevant information enters the joint data density at every point in time. Thus, although econometric models 'break down' intermittently when deterministic shifts occur, that is not due to the Lucas critique and need not impugen their value for policy analyses.

Conference Summary: Financial Globalization and Financial Instability

The Bank of Canada’s annual conference, held in October 2010, brought together leading researchers from universities and central banks around the world. Divided into six sessions plus a keynote address and a panel discussion, the conference covered such topics as the effects of financial globalization on risk, liquidity, and asset prices; the causes of crises and their effects; and appropriate regulatory responses.

A General Forecast-error Taxonomy

The paper considers the sources of forecast errors and their consequences in an evolving economy subject to structural breaks,forecasting from mis-specified, data-based models. A model-free taxonomy of forecast errors highlights that deterministic shifts are a major cause of systematic forecast failure. Other sources seem to pose fewer problems. The taxonomy embeds several previous model-based taxonomies for VARs, VECMs, and multi-step estimators, and reveals the stringent requirements that rationality assumptions impose on economic agents.