This book is about how models can be developed to represent demand and supply on markets, where the emphasis is on demand models. Its primary focus is on models that can be used by managers to support marketing decisions. Modeling Markets presents a comprehensive overview of the tools and methodologies that managers can use in decision making. It has long been known that even simple models outperform judgments in predicting outcomes in a wide variety of contexts. More complex models potentially provide insights about structural relations not available from casual observations. In this book, the authors present a wealth of insights developed at the forefront of the field, covering all key aspects of specification, estimation, validation and use of models. The most current insights and innovations in quantitative marketing are presented, including in-depth discussion of Bayesian estimation methods. Throughout the book, the authors provide examples and illustrations. This book will be of interest to researchers, analysts, managers and students who want to understand, develop or use models of marketing phenomena.

Game theory has been applied to a growing list of practical problems, from antitrust analysis to monetary policy; from the design of auction institutions to the structuring of incentives within firms; from patent races to dispute resolution. The purpose of Game Theory and Business Applications is to show how game theory can be used to model and analyze business decisions. The contents of this revised edition contain a wide variety of business functions - from accounting to operations, from marketing to strategy to organizational design. In addition, specific application areas include market competition, law and economics, bargaining and dispute resolution, and competitive bidding. All of these applications involve competitive decision settings, specifically situations where a number of economic agents in pursuit of their own self-interests and in accordance with the institutional "rules of the game" take actions that together affect all of their fortunes. As this volume demonstrates, game theory provides a compelling guide for analyzing business decisions and strategies.

This book covers topics in portfolio management and multicriteria decision analysis (MCDA), presenting a transparent and unified methodology for the portfolio construction process. The most important feature of the book includes the proposed methodological framework that integrates two individual subsystems, the portfolio selection subsystem and the portfolio optimization subsystem. An additional highlight of the book includes the detailed, step-by-step implementation of the proposed multicriteria algorithms in Python. The implementation is presented in detail; each step is elaborately described, from the input of the data to the extraction of the results. Algorithms are organized into small cells of code, accompanied by targeted remarks and comments, in order to help the reader to fully understand their mechanics. Readers are provided with a link to access the source code through GitHub. This Work may also be considered as a reference which presents the state-of-art research on portfolio construction with multiple and complex investment objectives and constraints. The book consists of eight chapters. A brief introduction is provided in Chapter 1. The fundamental issues of modern portfolio theory are discussed in Chapter 2. In Chapter 3, the various multicriteria decision aid methods, either discrete or continuous, are concisely described. In Chapter 4, a comprehensive review of the published literature in the field of multicriteria portfolio management is considered. In Chapter 5, an integrated and original multicriteria portfolio construction methodology is developed. Chapter 6 presents the web-based information system, in which the suggested methodological framework has been implemented. In Chapter 7, the experimental application of the proposed methodology is discussed and in Chapter 8, the authors provide overall conclusions. The readership of the book aims to be a diverse group, including fund managers, risk managers, investment advisors, bankers, private investors, analytics scientists, operations researchers scientists, and computer engineers, to name just several. Portions of the book may be used as instructional for either advanced undergraduate or post-graduate courses in investment analysis, portfolio engineering, decision science, computer science, or financial engineering.

One current challenge of conducting research from the leadership-as-practice perspective is a practical one: how to capture and analyse the elusive practice of leadership within the web of mundane organising processes. Although a number of researchers have attempted to address the issue, there is not yet a definitive 'how to' guide to making sense of the empirical manifestations of leadership practices. The book responds directly to this challenge and offers a theoretical framework and practical guidance to capturing, identifying and analysing evidence of leadership practice emergence; and provides implications of this approach for leadership academics and practitioners. The developed framework enables a method for understanding these leadership instances as they are enacted by individuals within and against the evolving activities of their day-to-day work. The framework is underpinned by cultural-historical activity theory and critical realism and it conceptualises leadership practice by placing agents' actions and interactions within the context of their relationships, objectives, experiences, material and non-material artefacts and wider organising processes and organisational structures; work that has not yet been undertaken in the field. It offers a strong theoretical foundation for further development of our understanding of leadership-as-practice, providing a methodological guidance for undertaking leadership-as-practice research, and enables a discussion on the variety of underlying processes and elements as they emerge from empirical observations. It will be of value to researchers, academics, professionals, and students in the fields of business and management with a particular interest in management theory, organisational studies, and leadership research.

Sustainable Self-Governance in Businesses and Society offers a sound introduction to Stafford Beer's Viable System Model (VSM) and clarifies its relevance to support organisational sustainability and self-governance. While the VSM has been known since the early 1980s, it hasn't been always easy to understand and to apply. It explains the self-transformation methodology to analyse the way organisations manage (or not) their complexity and govern themselves. The work is supported by multiple examples of application in organisations of all scales - from small to multi-national corporations and from organised social networks to communities and national organisations. It clarifies the relevance of Beer's theory to support systemic learning and change in organisations, and to coach them to self-organise and self-govern. Readers interested in further understanding insights from complex systems and cybernetics theories for designing and transforming organisations will benefit from this book, as it works to offer very detailed insights on how to put the VSM theory into practice. It clarifies how it improves adaptive capabilities, agile and self-regulated structures, more capable of fully implementing corporate sustainability strategies and self-governing themselves. The chapters provide key reading for managers, consultants, practitioners, and post-graduate students working in organisational transformation, governance, and sustainability.

The thesis provides different opportunities and ideas to face some current challenges in the electricity systems. It focuses on the effective and efficient integration of distributed low carbon technologies in the grid of the future. Planning and operation problems for different clean solutions, such as market bidding strategies for intermittent energy producers, demand side management algorithms for smart buildings, and electrical storage options for network operators, are studied for facilitating the integration of renewable energy sources in the power system chain.

The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration of the U.S. Department of Transportation defines hazardous materials (hazmat) as a substance or material capable of posing an unreasonable risk to health, safety, or property when transported in commerce. Hazmat accidents can result in significant impact to the population (death, injuries) and damage to the environment (destroyed or damaged buildings and infrastructure). Further, hazmat, especially explosive materials, can potentially be used by terrorists to attack civilians or to destroy critical infrastructure. This handbook provides models from Operations Research and Management Science that study various activities involving hazmat transportation: risk assessment, route planning, location decisions, evacuation planning, and emergency planning for terrorist attacks. There are two important research areas in hazmat transportation that are widely studied in the literature: risk assessment and shipment planning. In the risk assessment area, important issues include measurement of accident probabilities and consequences in hazmat transport. Example works in the risk assessment area include modeling risk probability distribution over given areas, considering hazmat types and transport modes, and environmental conditions. The first half of this handbook covers the two fields of risk assessment and shipment planning, while the second half of this handbook provides useful models and insights on other important issues including location problems for undesirable facilities, network interdiction, terrorist attack, and evacuation.

Computer simulation-based education and training is a multi-billion dollar industry. With the increased complexity of organizational decision making, projected demand for computer simulation-based decisional aids is on the rise. The objective of this book is to enhance systematically our understanding of and gain insights into the general process by which human facilitated ILEs are effectively designed and used in improving users' decision making in dynamic tasks. This book is divided into four major parts. Part I serves as an introduction to the subject of "decision making in dynamic tasks", its importance and its complexity. Part II provides background material, drawing upon the relevant literature, for the development of an integrated process model on the effectiveness of human facilitated ILEs in improving decision making in dynamic tasks. Part III focuses on the design, development and application of Fish Bank ILE, in laboratory experiments, to gather empirical evidence for the validity of the process model. Finally, part IV presents a comprehensive analysis of the gathered data to provide a powerful basis for understating important phenomena of training with human facilitated simulation-based learning environments, thereby, help to drive critical lessons to be learned. This book provides the reader with both a comprehensive understanding of the phenomena encountered in decision making with human facilitated ILEs and a unique way of studying the effects of these phenomena on people's ability to make better decision in complex, dynamic tasks. This book is intended to be of use to managers and practitioners, researchers and students of dynamic decision making. The background material of Part II provides a solid base to understand and organize the existing experimental research literature and approaches.

Fund Custody and Administration provides an overall perspective of investment funds without limiting its analysis to specific fund structures, as other books do. Since governance and oversight of investment funds are now major regulatory requirements, administrators and custodians must place greater emphasis on the custody and safekeeping of fund assets, on the independent and robust valuation of the assets, and on collateral management. By focusing on both the asset transactions made by the investment manager for the portfolio and on the transactions in the shares or units of the fund itself, it gives readers insights about the essential elements of investment fund management and administration, regardless of their geographical backgrounds.

The goal of this book is to elaborate on the main principles of the theory of the Berge equilibrium by answering the following two questions: What are the basic properties of the Berge equilibrium? Does the Berge equilibrium exist, and how can it be calculated? The Golden Rule of ethics, which appears in Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Confucianism and other world religions, states the following: "Behave towards others as you would like them to behave towards you." In any game, each party of conflict seeks to maximize some payoff. Therefore, for each player, the Golden Rule is implemented through the maximization of his/her payoff by all other players, which matches well with the concept of the Berge equilibrium. The approach presented here will be of particular interest to researchers (including undergraduates and graduates) and economists focused on decision-making under complex conflict conditions. The peaceful resolution of conflicts is the cornerstone of the approach: as a matter of fact, the Golden Rule precludes military clashes and violence. In turn, the new approach requires new methods; in particular, the existence problems are reduced to saddle point design for the Germeier convolution of payoff functions, with further transition to mixed strategies in accordance with the standard procedure employed by E. Borel, J. von Neumann, J. Nash, and their followers. Moreover, this new approach has proven to be efficient and fruitful with regard to a range of other important problems in mathematical game theory, which are considered in the Appendix.

Since its opening in 1978, China has undergone radical change. By establishing special economic zones along its Eastern coastal borders under Deng Xioping's tutelage, China entered the global market. Loosening controls from central government allowed for a more free-market approach that facilitated easier trading partnerships across national boundaries. Leadership and China: Philosophy, Place and Practice explores the impact of these changes today. Companies across the globe are doing business with Chinese counterparts, but recently the Western world has begun treating China with suspicion, with some commentators claiming nefarious aims on the part of Chinese Communist Party, and intentions of favoring China's growing middle class and political elites, while impoverishing other international trading partners. This calls for wise leadership on both sides of the political divide and this book facilitates conversations that explore synergies between East and West, aiming to move past suspicion and discuss how leaders might work for the benefit of all humanity. With an orientation towards conversations rather than polemics, graduate students, scholars and business leaders across the globe will benefit from this book.

This handbook is a unique, comprehensive resource for professional project managers and students in project management courses that focuses on the integration between baseline scheduling, schedule risk analysis and project control, also known as Dynamic Scheduling or Integrated Project Management and Control. It contains a set of more than 70 articles. Each individual article focuses on one particular topic and features links to other articles in this book, where appropriate. Almost all articles are accompanied with a set of questions, the answers to which are provided at the end of the book. This book is accompanied by and is based on the Project Management Knowledge Center (www.pmknowledgecenter.com), an online learning platform for Integrated Project Management.

This book addresses two-person zero-sum finite games in which the payoffs in any situation are expressed with fuzzy numbers. The purpose of this book is to develop a suite of effective and efficient linear programming models and methods for solving matrix games with payoffs in fuzzy numbers. Divided into six chapters, it discusses the concepts of solutions of matrix games with payoffs of intervals, along with their linear programming models and methods. Furthermore, it is directly relevant to the research field of matrix games under uncertain economic management. The book offers a valuable resource for readers involved in theoretical research and practical applications from a range of different fields including game theory, operational research, management science, fuzzy mathematical programming, fuzzy mathematics, industrial engineering, business and social economics.

This book studies the urban logistics system from the perspective of reliability, based on the theory of urban logistics and system reliability, with the research of urban logistics system reliability as the main line, with matter element analysis and ant colony algorithm as the main research tools. On this basis, this book closely focuses on the connotation, influencing factors, measurement, optimization, and other issues of the reliability of urban logistics systems. By analyzing the influencing factors and constituent contents of the reliability of urban logistics system, the reliability measurement is researched, and the reliability optimization model of urban logistics system is established, which is suitable for popular science reading or in-depth study by readers with a certain foundation.

This third edition provides operations management students, academics and professionals with a fully up-to-date, practical and comprehensive sourcebook in the science of distribution and Supply Chain Management (SCM). Its objective is not only to discover the roots and detail the techniques of supply and delivery channel networks, but also to explore the impact of the merger of SCM concepts and information technologies on all aspects of internal business and supply channel management. This textbook provides a thorough and sometimes analytical view of the topic, while remaining approachable from the standpoint of the reader. Although the text is broad enough to encompass all the management activities found in today's logistics and distribution channel organizations, it is detailed enough to provide the reader with a thorough understanding of essential strategic and tactical planning and control processes, as well as problem-solving techniques that can be applied to everyday operations. Distribution Planning and Control: Managing in the Era of Supply Chain Management, 3rd Ed. is comprised of fifteen chapters, divided into five units. Unit 1 of the text, The SCM and Distribution Management Environment, sets the background necessary to understand today's supply chain environment. Unit 2, SCM Strategies, Channel Structures and Demand Management, reviews the activities involved in performing strategic planning, designing channel networks, forecasting and managing channel demand. Unit 3, Inventory Management in the Supply Chain Environment, provides an in-depth review of managing supply chain inventories, statistical inventory management, and inventory management in a multiechelon channel environment. Unit 4, Supply Chain Execution, traces the translation of the strategic supply chain plans into detailed customer and supplier management, warehousing and transportation operations activities. Finally Unit 5, International Distribution and Supply Chain Technologies, concludes the text by exploring the role of two integral elements of SCM: international distribution management and the deployment of information technologies in the supply chain environment. Each chapter includes summary questions and problems to challenge readers to their knowledge of concepts and topics covered. Additionally supplementary materials for instructors are also available as tools for learning reinforcement.

This book is an introduction to relevant aspects of the foraging literature for algorithmic design, and an overview of key families of optimization algorithms that stem from a foraging metaphor. The authors first offer perspectives on foraging and foraging-inspired algorithms for optimization, they then explain the techniques inspired by the behaviors of vertebrates, invertebrates, and non-neuronal organisms, and they then discuss algorithms based on formal models of foraging, how to evolve a foraging strategy, and likely future developments. No prior knowledge of natural computing is assumed. This book will be of particular interest to graduate students, academics and practitioners in computer science, informatics, data science, management science, and other application domains.

This open access book analyzes and seeks to consolidate the use of robust quantitative tools and qualitative methods for the design and assessment of energy and climate policies. In particular, it examines energy and climate policy performance and associated risks, as well as public acceptance and portfolio analysis in climate policy, and presents methods for evaluating the costs and benefits of flexible policy implementation as well as new framings for business and market actors. In turn, it discusses the development of alternative policy pathways and the identification of optimal switching points, drawing on concrete examples to do so. Lastly, it discusses climate change mitigation policies' implications for the agricultural, food, building, transportation, service and manufacturing sectors.

This book presents a range of qualitative and quantitative analyses in areas such as cybersecurity, sustainability, multivariate analysis, customer satisfaction, parametric programming, software reliability growth modeling, and blockchain technology, to name but a few. It also highlights integrated methods and practices in the areas of machine learning and genetic algorithms. After discussing applications in supply chains and logistics, cloud computing, six sigma, production management, big data analysis, satellite imaging, game theory, biometric systems, quality, and system performance, the book examines the latest developments and breakthroughs in the field of science and technology, and provides novel problem-solving methods. The themes discussed in the book link contributions by researchers and practitioners from different branches of engineering and management, and hailing from around the globe. These contributions provide scholars with a platform to derive maximum utility in the area of analytics by subscribing to the idea of managing business through system sciences, operations, and management. Managers and decision-makers can learn a great deal from the respective chapters, which will help them devise their own business strategies and find real-world solutions to complex industrial problems.

Knowledge capital is at the core of the socio-economic global system. Profit and not-for profit firms, institutions, and organizations, in general, face unique opportunities and threats related to knowledge management. Digital technologies and digital transformation offer a wide array of opportunities for value creation. At the same time, organizations need to foster newer, faster, and more dynamic ways of mobilizing and managing knowledge. Emerging trends, such as artificial intelligence, collective intelligence, agile methodologies, open innovation, and co-creation enable new business models and managerial paradigms that need to be understood and conceptualized. This book offers an extensive overview of the most recent trends in knowledge management and the most advanced theoretical approaches, while, at the same time, providing a wide array of case studies and evidence-based knowledge management practices. It takes into account the interrelation between ICT and knowledge management challenges, in terms of human/non-human interactions, which requires extraordinary organizational change and renewal. Further, the book presents an up-to-date examination of and guidance for the implementation of knowledge management in an era of unprecedented human/non-human interaction. The book conveys the results of more than a decade of research and applied experience in the field of knowledge management carried out by the author. It is intended not only for students and academics but also for managers and practitioners who are interested in deepening their understanding of knowledge and learning.

This book describes Python3 programming resources for implementing decision aiding algorithms in the context of a bipolar-valued outranking approach. These computing resources, made available under the name Digraph3, are useful in the field of Algorithmic Decision Theory and more specifically in outranking-based Multiple-Criteria Decision Aiding (MCDA). The first part of the book presents a set of tutorials introducing the Digraph3 collection of Python3 modules and its main objects, such as bipolar-valued digraphs and outranking digraphs. In eight methodological chapters, the second part illustrates multiple-criteria evaluation models and decision algorithms. These chapters are largely problem-oriented and demonstrate how to edit a new multiple-criteria performance tableau, how to build a best choice recommendation, how to compute the winner of an election and how to make rankings or ratings using incommensurable criteria. The book's third part presents three real-world decision case studies, while the fourth part addresses more advanced topics, such as computing ordinal correlations between bipolar-valued outranking digraphs, computing kernels in bipolar-valued digraphs, testing for confidence or stability of outranking statements when facing uncertain or solely ordinal criteria significance weights, and tempering plurality tyranny effects in social choice problems. The fifth and last part is more specifically focused on working with undirected graphs, tree graphs and forests. The closing chapter explores comparability, split, interval and permutation graphs. The book is primarily intended for graduate students in management sciences, computational statistics and operations research. The chapters presenting algorithms for ranking multicriteria performance records will be of computational interest for designers of web recommender systems. Similarly, the relative and absolute quantile-rating algorithms, discussed and illustrated in several chapters, will be of practical interest to public and private performance auditors.

The third edition of this textbook comprehensively discusses global supply chain and operations management (SCOM), combining value creation networks and interacting processes. It focuses on operational roles within networks and presents the quantitative and organizational methods needed to plan and control the material, information, and financial flows in supply chains. Each chapter begins with an introductory case study, while numerous examples from various industries and services help to illustrate the key concepts. The book explains how to design operations and supply networks and how to incorporate suppliers and customers. It examines how to balance supply and demand, a core aspect of tactical planning, before turning to the allocation of resources to meet customer needs. In addition, the book presents state-of-the-art research reflecting the lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic, and emerging, fast-paced developments in the digitalization of supply chain and operations management. Providing readers with a working knowledge of global supply chain and operations management, with a focus on bridging the gap between theory and practice, this textbook can be used in core, specialized, and advanced classes alike. It is intended for a broad range of students and professionals in supply chain and operations management.

This book presents classical Markov Decision Processes (MDP) for real-life applications and optimization. MDP allows users to develop and formally support approximate and simple decision rules, and this book showcases state-of-the-art applications in which MDP was key to the solution approach. The book is divided into six parts. Part 1 is devoted to the state-of-the-art theoretical foundation of MDP, including approximate methods such as policy improvement, successive approximation and infinite state spaces as well as an instructive chapter on Approximate Dynamic Programming. It then continues with five parts of specific and non-exhaustive application areas. Part 2 covers MDP healthcare applications, which includes different screening procedures, appointment scheduling, ambulance scheduling and blood management. Part 3 explores MDP modeling within transportation. This ranges from public to private transportation, from airports and traffic lights to car parking or charging your electric car . Part 4 contains three chapters that illustrates the structure of approximate policies for production or manufacturing structures. In Part 5, communications is highlighted as an important application area for MDP. It includes Gittins indices, down-to-earth call centers and wireless sensor networks. Finally Part 6 is dedicated to financial modeling, offering an instructive review to account for financial portfolios and derivatives under proportional transactional costs. The MDP applications in this book illustrate a variety of both standard and non-standard aspects of MDP modeling and its practical use. This book should appeal to readers for practitioning, academic research and educational purposes, with a background in, among others, operations research, mathematics, computer science, and industrial engineering.

This book is intended to present the milestones in the progression of uncertain Data envelopment analysis (DEA). Chapter 1 gives some basic introduction to uncertain theories, including probability theory, credibility theory, uncertainty theory and chance theory. Chapter 2 presents a comprehensive review and discussion of basic DEA models. The stochastic DEA is introduced in Chapter 3, in which the inputs and outputs are assumed to be random variables. To obtain the probability distribution of a random variable, a lot of samples are needed to apply the statistics inference approach. Chapter 4 and 5 provide two uncertain DEA methods to evaluate the DMUs with limited or insufficient statistical data, named fuzzy DEA and uncertain DEA. In order to evaluate the DMUs in which uncertainty and randomness appear simultaneously, the hybrid DEA based on chance theory is presented in Chapter 6.

This book provides readers with an introduction to m-polar fuzzy graphs and m-polar fuzzy hypergraphs, covering both theories and applications. A special emphasis is given to m-polar fuzzy graphs at the aim of filling a gap in the literature, namely the absence of a mathematical approach to analyze multi-index, multipolar, and multi-attribute data. The book describes metrics and labeling in m-polar graphs, m-polar fuzzy matroids. It also discusses in detail important applications in decision-making problems and imaging processing. The book is expected to stimulate the curiosity of mathematics, computer scientists, and social scientists alike, and to provide both students and researchers with the necessary knowledge to understand and apply m polar fuzzy graph theory.

Open internationalization is a concept that brings a new perspective on the process of firm internationalization. As theories of internationalization show, some companies expand abroad only on their own, known as closed internationalization, while others combine their resources with those of other firms or use their networks for facilitating foreign implantation, known as open internationalization. Parallel to the development of the well-known concept of open innovation, open internationalization can be conceived as a meta-model for understanding companies' expansion abroad. This book gathers a selection of contemporary research works dedicated to open internationalization, either seen as a way to analyze expansion in foreign countries, or as a way to investigate the management of geographically dispersed activities. All the authors of the chapters are researchers specialized in the internationalization field. Readers will benefit from this new lens for understanding, studying or practising international business, from the decision to go abroad to its implementation and its efficiency. Open Internationalization Strategy includes both academic empirical investigations and literature reviews on specific topics, making it valuable to researchers, academics, managers, and students in the fields of business and management history, international business, organizational studies, and economics.