Examining sustainability performance in the supply chain: The case of the Greek dairy sector

This is the post-print version of the final paper published in Industrial Marketing Management. The published article is available from the link below. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. Copyright @ 2013 Elsevier B.V.This paper evaluates the sustainability performance of the Greek dairy chain and the performance of its individual members by using key indicators in relation to efficiency, flexibility, responsiveness and product quality. We assessed the importance of these indicators based on the relevant perceptions of key members of this chain. A structured questionnaire was developed where nineteen sustainability-related issues were examined. Two hundred and fifty three members of the Greek dairy supply chain responded including breeders, manufacturers, wholesalers, retailers and catering companies. Our findings illustrate the immediate need for improvement in many key sustainability performance indicators. They also show the critical role of large dairy manufacturers who are the “sustainability performance champions” in this chain and are the driving force for the implementation of many sustainability initiatives.European Unio

Real-time information security incident management : a case study using the IS-CHEC technique

Information security recognised the human as the weakest link. Despite numerous international or sector-specific standards and frameworks, the information security community has not yet adopted formal mechanisms to manage human errors that cause information security breaches. Such techniques have been however established within the safety field where human reliability analysis (HRA) techniques are widely applied. In previous work we developed Information Security Core Human Error Causes (IS-CHEC) to fill this gap. This case study presents empirical research that uses IS-CHEC over a 12 month period within two participating public and private sector organisations in order to observe and understand how the implementation of the IS-CHEC information security HRA technique affected the respective organisations. The application of the IS-CHEC technique enabled the proportions of human error related information security incidents to be understood as well as the underlying causes of these incidents. The study captured the details of the incidents in terms of the most common underlying causes, selection of remedial and preventative measures, volumes of reported information security incidents, proportions of human error, common tasks undertaken at the time the incident occurred, as well as the perceptions of key individuals within the participating organisations through semi-structured interviews. The study confirmed in both cases that the vast majority of reported information security incidents relate to human error, and although the volumes of human error related incidents pertaining to both participating organisations fluctuated over the 12 month period, the proportions of human error remained consistently as the majority root cause

Primary angiosarcoma of the lung and pleura

A 46 year old male smoker was admitted for severe continuing hemoptysis. Chest-X-rays and chest computed tomography revealed nodular infiltrates and bilateral hemothorax. Fiberoptic bronchoscopy resulted to non-diagnostic cytological and microbiological findings. Open lung and pleural biopsies after right thoracotomy revealed epithelioid angiosarcoma and further staging assessment showed secondary brain and liver foci. The patient received several courses of chemotherapy but he died one month later. The clinical, radiological, pathological, histochemical and therapeutic aspects of the disease are discussed. Angiosarcoma, a rare tumour with poor prognosis should be taken into consideration in the differential diagnosis of hemoptysis

Sport fans' roles in value co-creation

Research question The sports industry has witnessed sustained growth. The cultural, symbolic and stakeholder-embedded nature of sport provides a dynamic setting for developing service research. In this context, an evolution in the logic of value creation can be observed; fans are no longer passive receivers of value but, instead, can be active value co-creators. The sport fan exhibits distinctive characteristics and an ability and willingness to integrate resources and co-produce value propositions, which necessitates an understanding of fan value co-creation. We answer one key research question: what is the role of fans in value co-creation in sports? We do so by conceptually exploring the processes through which sport fans co-create and provide value propositions. Research methods We use case exemplars to provide a base for the theoretical consideration of the role of sport fans in value co-creation. We verify and consolidate the service-dominant logic (SDL) in the sport context. However, due to the high level of abstraction of the SDL as a general theory, we utilize consumer culture theory (CCT) as a middle range theory (MRT) to bridge the gap between contextual descriptions of the role of fans and the SDL. Results and findings Fans evaluate, redefine and reposition value propositions in different sport settings. The three roles of assimilators, adaptors and authenticators in value co-creation are identified through five case exemplars. We extend the theoretical understanding of the processes through which sport fans co-create value. Implications Knowledge of the distinctive characteristics of sport fans and their roles in value co-creation will assist managers in developing effective marketing propositions. Our theoretical contribution will generate new lines of research in the field

Betweenness Centrality – Incremental and Faster

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Dynamic pricing strategies for multi-product revenue management problems

Consider a firm that owns a fixed capacity of a resource that is consumed in the production or delivery of multiple products. The firm strives to maximize its total expected revenues over a finite horizon, either by choosing a dynamic pricing strategy for each product or, if prices are fixed, by selecting a dynamic rule that controls the allocation of capacity to requests for the different products. This paper shows how these well-studied revenue management problems can be reduced to a common formulation in which the firm controls the aggregate rate at which all products jointly consume resource capacity, highlighting their common structure, and in some cases leading to algorithmic simplifications through the reduction in the control dimension of the associated optimization problems. In the context of their associated deterministic (fluid) formulations, this reduction leads to a closed-form characterization of the optimal controls, and suggests several natural static and dynamic pricing heuristics. These are analyzed asymptotically and through an extensive numerical study. In the context of the former, we show that "resolving" the fluid heuristic achieves asymptotically optimal performance under fluid scaling.revenue management, dynamic pricing, capacity controls, fluid approximations, efficient frontier