This handbook gathers state-of-the-art research on optimization problems in power distribution systems, covering classical problems as well as the challenges introduced by distributed power generation and smart grid resources. It also presents recent models, solution techniques and computational tools to solve planning problems for power distribution systems and explains how to apply them in distributed and variable energy generation resources. As such, the book therefore is a valuable tool to leverage the expansion and operation planning of electricity distribution networks.

This book covers a large spectrum of cutting-edge game theory applications in management science in which Professor Georges Zaccour has made significant contributions. The book consists of 21 chapters and highlights the latest treatments of game theory in various areas, including marketing, supply chains, energy and environmental management, and cyber defense. With this book, former Ph.D. students and successful research collaborators of Professor Zaccour wish to honor his many scientific achievements.

This book sets out to provide postgraduate researchers with guidance on selecting and applying sociotechnical theories to the study of information systems, including how they can be combined to complement each other. Until now it has been difficult to source advice on the application of these theories, and there has been no single book that combines multiple theories as this does. Examining the impacts of technological developments and seeking to understand how humans interact with computers and systems is a dynamic field but can often confuse researchers with the overwhelming number of social theories that are utilised to derive insights. Instead, the author in this book breaks down some of the most popular theories used to underpin information system research, such as activity theory (AT), actor-network theory (ANT), contingency theory (CT), diffusion of innovation (DOI) theory, structuration theory (ST), and the technology acceptance model (TAM). By doing so, this book serves to enable a simpler, faster selection of appropriate theories, and a more effective and productive application that leads to richer, more rigorous research outcomes. Written for postgraduates, researchers, and academics in the fields of information technology and information systems, this book provides a valuable resource of sociotechnical research methodologies that will enable and enhance future studies.

This book reports on cutting-edge research and best practices in developing innovative service systems. It covers issues concerning the suitability of a given system for human use, human services, and excellent human experiences. It explores a wide range of ways in which human factors in engineering, ergonomics, human-computer interaction (HCI), cognitive engineering, and many other disciplines can contribute to the design and management of service systems. It considers aspects related to cost effectiveness, ethics, and privacy, among others, and covers applications in many areas, from healthcare to education, transportation, and the economy. Based on the AHFE 2020 Virtual Conference on the Human Side of Service Engineering, held on July 16-20, 2020, the book provides readers with a comprehensive overview of current research and future challenges in the field of service engineering, together with practical insights into the development of innovative services for various kinds of organizations.

Research and development infrastructures are a critical success factor in the platform of science and technology. In turn, an R&D preliminary feasibility study is essential to establish fairness and social credibility of a plan, including expert review, information disclosure and alternative setting. Preliminary Feasibility for Public Research & Development Projects explains how to evaluate R&D business by exploring the five key features of policy implication, policy improvement, preliminary feasibility study, R&D evaluation, and R&D strategy. Presenting policy measures to ensure the sustainability of R&D projects, Preliminary Feasibility for Public Research & Development Projects will help develop strategic measures for R&D preliminary feasibility studies while proposing ways to enhance the effectiveness of these studies, promote efficiency in public investment projects, and enhance the financial efficiency of large investment projects.

For decades, scholars have bemoaned the low relevancy and impact of most research in the leading journals in business, management, and marketing. The majority of the research that gets published, perhaps 70% of it, hardly has any measurable scholarly impact in terms of citations. Rather than low relevancy, 'Bad to Good' posits that the deeper issue is the pervasive use of bad research practices appearing in most articles in almost all ranked journals in the sub-disciplines of business. With the objective of reducing the high volume of bad practices in research in finance, management and marketing, the book offers tools for improving theory construction and empirical testing of theory especially by early-to-mid scholars. 'Bad to Good' covers 24 common bad practices, explaining why they are bad and how to replace them with good practices. Arch Woodside is a leading voice on how to improve business research. He served as the Editor-in-Chief of the 'Journal of Business Research' (JBR) for forty years. In 2016 the JBR ranked first among the top-twenty journals in marketing in the Google.com/scholar h-5 index (an impact metric) and seventh among the strategic management sub-discipline.

This volume offers state-of-the-art research in service science and its related research, education and practice areas. It showcases recent developments in smart service systems, operations management and analytics and their impact in complex service systems. The papers included in this volume highlight emerging technology and applications in fields including healthcare, energy, finance, information technology, transportation, sports, logistics, and public services. Regardless of size and service, a service organization is a service system. Because of the socio-technical nature of a service system, a systems approach must be adopted to design, develop, and deliver services, aimed at meeting end users' both utilitarian and socio-psychological needs. Effective understanding of service and service systems often requires combining multiple methods to consider how interactions of people, technology, organizations, and information create value under various conditions. The papers in this volume present methods to approach such technical challenges in service science and are based on top papers from the 2019 INFORMS International Conference on Service Science.

This book gathers extended versions of the best papers presented at the Global Joint Conference on Industrial Engineering and Its Application Areas (GJCIE), held on September 2-3, 2019, in Gazimagusa, North Cyprus, Turkey. It covers a wide range of topics, including decision analysis, supply chain management, systems modelling and quality control. Further, special emphasis is placed on the state of the art and the challenges of digital disruption, as well as effective strategies that can be used to change organizational structures and eliminate the barriers that are keeping industries from taking full advantage of today's digital technologies.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 6th International Symposium on Chaos, Complexity and Leadership (ICCLS). Written by interdisciplinary researchers and students from the fields of mathematics, physics, education, economics, political science, statistics, the management sciences and social sciences, the peer-reviewed contributions explore chaotic and complex systems, as well as chaos and complexity theory in the context of their applicability to management and leadership. The book discusses current topics, such as complexity leadership in the healthcare fields and tourism industry, conflict management and organization intelligence, and presents practical applications of theoretical concepts, making it a valuable resource for managers and leaders.

Most successful companies have operations management at their heart. It enables strategy and should be part of boardroom discussions. However, Cranfield research has shown that business strategy barely recognises the world of operations management. Recognising that operations management needs to be more strategic, Business Operations Models is a revolutionary new title that looks at the interrelationship of operations management and strategy. In Business Operations Models, Martin Christopher and Alan Braithwaite identify the characteristics of market-leading businesses that have transformed their markets and delivered super performance for their stakeholders. It points to the theory gap between strategic thinking and operations and how many high-performing businesses arrive at their new operating models as much by chance as judgement. Unpacking those observations leads to some clearly defined features of winning competitors, including eliminating waste, leveraging technology, and utilising transformative business models. Business Operations Models offers a framework for achieving super performance and understanding when and how a company may be able to leverage its capabilities to outperform. The book provides detailed international case studies that illustrate how the principles work in practice, including Apple, Dell, Amazon, John Lewis, Southwest airlines, Aldi, Toyota and many others.

This book aims to revisit the "traditional" interaction between channel strategies and the marketing mix in a connected world. In particular, it focuses on the following four dimensions in this context: Consumers, Products, Value Proposition and Sustainability. Keeping in mind the growing digitalization of business processes in the retail world and the move towards omni-channel retailing, the book introduces the state-of-the-art academic and practitioner studies along these dimensions that could enhance the understanding of the potential impact that new technologies and strategies can have on practice in the near future. When launching a new product/service to market, firms usually consider various components of the marketing mix to influence consumers' purchase behaviors, such as product design, convenience, value proposition, promotions, sustainability initiatives, etc. This mix varies depending on the specific channel and consumer niche that the firm is targeting. But this book shows how channel strategy also influences the effectiveness in utilizing the marketing mix to attract potential customers.

Analysis, assessment, and data management are core tools required for operation research analysts. The April 2011 conference held at the Helenic Military Academy addressed these issues with efforts to collect valuable recommendations for improving analysts' capabilities to assess and communicate the necessary qualitative data to military leaders. This unique volume is an outgrowth of the April conference and comprises of contributions from the fields of science, mathematics, and the military, bringing Greek research findings to the world. Topics cover a wide variety of mathematical methods used with application to defense and security. Each contribution considers directions and pursuits of scientists that pertain to the military as well as the theoretical background required for methods, algorithms, and techniques used in military applications. The direction of theoretical results in these applications is conveyed and open problems and future areas of focus are highlighted. A foreword will be composed by a member of N.A.T.O. or a ranking member of the armed forces. Topics covered include: applied OR and military applications, signal processing, scattering, scientific computing and applications, combat simulation and statistical modeling, satellite remote sensing, and applied informatics - cryptography and coding. The contents of this volume will be of interest to a diverse audience including military operations research analysts, the military community at large, and practitioners working with mathematical methods and applications to informatics and military science.

The "Guide to Management Research Methods "is an invaluable introductory textbook for all students of organizations. Organizational scientists must be able to conduct reliable research on the basis of empirical field data, and to argue the soundness or validity of their research approach, either as a researcher within a university or research institute, as an organizational consultant, or as a staff member in an organization. A career as an organizational scientist requires an important range of knowledge and skills.

This popular textbook provides students at undergraduate and MBA levels with a thorough introduction to the research methods with which they need to be familiar and how to apply them. A popular course text, it teaches the skills that are essential for planning, conducting and reporting research projects, as well as evaluating the research of others. The authors offer a clear overview of the different steps in a research process: from the definition of a research problem to designing and conducting a study. Each chapter corresponds with a specific stage in the research project. Numerous examples and practical guidelines are provided throughout. Finally, attention is paid to the results of statistical data analyses and their inclusion in the report and presentation of the research project.

In a fast moving world the transportation of goods is expected to be more efficient than ever before. This compendia features papers that address key themes in green logistics such as benchmarking and energy efficiency and includes highly cited papers from international contributors such as Alan McKinnon and Joseph Sarkis.

This shortform book presents key peer-reviewed research on industrial history. In selecting and contextualising this volume, the editors address how the field of textile history has evolved. Themes covered include entrepreneurial, technological and labour history, whilst the book highlights the strategic and social consequences of innovations in the history of this key UK sector. Of interest to business and economic historians, this shortform book also provides analysis and illustrative case studies that will be valuable reading across the social sciences.

Covering deterministic scheduling, stochastic scheduling, and the probabilistic analysis of algorithms, this unusually broad view of the subject brings together tutorials, surveys and articles with original results from foremost international experts. The contributions reflect the great diversity in scheduling theory in terms of academic disciplines, applications areas, fundamental approaches and mathematical skills. This book will help researchers to be aware of the progress in the various areas of specialization and the possible influences that this progress may have on their own specialities. Few disciplines are driven so much by continually changing and expanding technology, a fact that gives scheduling a permanence while adding to the excitement of designing and analyzing new systems. The book will be a vital resource for researchers and graduate students of computer science, applied mathematics and operational research who wish to remain up-to-date on the scheduling models and problems of many of the newest technologies in industry, commerce, and the computer and communications sciences.

The proceedings focus on selected aspects of the current and upcoming trends in transportation, logistics and decision-making. In detail the included scientific papers analyze the problem of Decision Making under Uncertainty, Stochastic Optimization, Transportation, Logistics and Intelligent Business. The variety of the papers delivers added value for both scholars and practitioners. This book is the documentation of the symposium "The Sixth International Forum on Decision Sciences", which took place in Jinan, Shandong province, China.

This book introduces readers to the use of R codes for optimization problems. First, it provides the necessary background to understand data envelopment analysis (DEA), with a special emphasis on fuzzy DEA. It then describes DEA models, including fuzzy DEA models, and shows how to use them to solve optimization problems with R. Further, it discusses the main advantages of R in optimization problems, and provides R codes based on real-world data sets throughout. Offering a comprehensive review of DEA and fuzzy DEA models and the corresponding R codes, this practice-oriented reference guide is intended for masters and Ph.D. students in various disciplines, as well as practitioners and researchers.

"ExpressExec" is a unique business resource of one hundred books. These books present the best current thinking and span the entire range of contemporary business practice. Each book gives you the key concepts behind the subject and the techniques to implement the ideas effectively, together with lessons from benchmark companies and ideas from the world's smartest thinkers.

"ExpressExec" is organised into ten core subject areas making it easy to find the information you need:

01 Innovation
02 Enterprise
03 Strategy
04 Marketing
05 Finance
06 Operations and Technology
07 Organizations
08 Leading
09 People
10 Life and Work

"ExpressExec" is a perfect learning solution for people who need to master the latest business thinking and practice quickly.

This proceedings volume presents recent theoretical and practical advances in operational research (OR). The papers focus on a number of key areas including combinatorial optimization, integer programming, heuristics, and mathematical programming. In addition, this volume highlights OR applications in different areas such as financial decision making, marketing, e-business, project management, scheduling, traffic and transportation. The chapters are based on papers presented at the 13th Balkan Conference on Operations Research (BALCOR). BALCOR is an established biennial conference. The selected papers promote international collaboration among researchers and practitioners, with a particular focus on the Balkan countries.

This title presents a fast track route to understanding crisis management. It covers the key areas of crisis management from crisis planning and handling a global business crisis to crisis plan execution. It offers examples and lessons from some of the world's most successful businesses, including Parsons Corporation, Pepsi Cola, Johnson and Johnson and General Motors, and ideas from the smartest thinkers, including Douglas Hearle, James E Lukaszewski and Fraser P Seitel. It includes a glossary of key concepts and a comprehensive resources guide.

This book discusses an emerging area in computer science, IT and management, i.e., decision sciences and management. It includes studies that employ various computing techniques like machine learning to generate insights from huge amounts of available data; and which explore decision-making for cross-platforms that contain heterogeneous data associated with complex assets; leadership; and team coordination. It also reveals the advantages of using decision sciences with management-oriented problems. The book includes a selection of the best papers presented at the International Conference on Decision Science and Management 2018 (ICDSM 2018), held at the Interscience Institute of Management and Technology (IIMT), Bhubaneswar, India.

Mention the phrase "bottom line," and the immediate thought tends to focus on a company's financial performance. Think again! There's an equally important factor that carries tremendous impact on that final total: operational performance measures.
Implementation of a performance improvement program can significantly improve a company's bottom line. Operational Performance Measurement: Increasing Total Productivity shows the way-featuring a new integrated theory of performance measurement, with a never-before-published measurement model that's applicable to any business activity.
Practical procedures and guidelines directly identify the variables that should be measured; guidelines to develop measurement systems; and how to analyze, interpret, and use performance methods effectively. Numerous diagrams, tables and examples make the principles and procedures easy to understand and implement.
While this performance measurement approach is simplicity itself, be prepared for powerful results!
Managers can put the theory into action right away- giving them better control, improved performance, increased personal productivity-and an easier day at work!
Operations, finance, administration and quality managers alike will find there's so much to gain when they're Operational Performance Measurement: Increasing Total Productivity ... and a better bottom line is just the beginning!

We are now entering a new phase in the establishment of historical organization studies as a distinctive methodological paradigm within the broad field of organization studies. This book serves both as a landmark in the development of the field and as a key reference tool for researchers and students. For two decades, organization theorists have emphasized the need for more and better research recognizing the importance of the past in shaping the present and future. By historicizing organizational research, the contexts and forces bearing upon organizations will be more fully recognized, and analyses of organizational dynamics improved. But how, precisely, might a traditionally empirically oriented discipline such as history be incorporated into a theoretically oriented discipline such as organization studies? This book evaluates the current state of play, advances it and identifies the possibilities the new emergent field offers for the future. In addition to providing an important work of reference on the subject for researchers, the book can be used to introduce management and organizational history to a student audience at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. The book is a valuable source for wider reading, providing rich reference material in tutorials across organizational studies, or as recommended or required reading on courses with a connection to business or management history.

This book discusses an emerging field of decision science that focuses on business processes and systems used to extract knowledge from large volumes of data to provide significant insights for crucial decisions in critical situations. It presents studies employing computing techniques like machine learning, which explore decision-making for cross-platforms that contain heterogeneous data associated with complex assets, leadership, and team coordination. It also reveals the advantages of using decision sciences with management-oriented problems. The book includes a selection of the best papers presented at the 2nd International Conference on Decision Science and Management (ICDSM 2019), held at Hunan International Economics University, China, on 20-21 September 2019.