You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
The liberalization process, tightening environmental standards and the need for replacing aged power plants force European utilities to optimize their future generation mix. Power plants are real assets and as a consequence the power plant park of a utility firm equals a portfolio of different generation assets. This thesis adds to the understanding how to identify an efficient generation portfolio through time by assuming a non-constant feasible set. According to our results a combination of conventional thermal and renewable energies turn out to be efficient in terms of expected value and risks. Therefore, implementing a strategy based on renewable energies which cause less CO2 per MWh generated electricity clearly pays off. Potential readership includes scholars from energy economics and energy finance as well as interested practitioners involved in these areas.
Efficient and effective transportation networks are backbones to modern societies. Methodologically, their design has mainly been driven by optimization approaches oftentimes with a strong cost focus. Their strategic planning, however, should go beyond detailed cost analysis and identify other key decision drivers. Transportation network centrality describes the appearance of a network; hence is crucial for network design. Anne Paul develops a strategic approach to transportation network design by conceptualizing transportation network centrality and relating it to the performance and quality of transportation networks. Consequently, the concept of network centrality serves to support decisions in strategic network design. A practical implementation of this approach is provided, demonstrating its feasibility. Potential readers include scholars and practitioners from logistics, supply chain management, and operational research with an interest in strategic transportation network design.
Family firm research has shown that the cooperative resolution of conflict between the incumbent entrepreneur and his successor is crucial for the survival of the family firm. Dispute resolution research suggests that a third party acting as mediator can provide valuable support to their efforts. Father to Son synthesizes insights from both lines of research to propose when, and how, mediation can contribute to the resolution of family firm succession conflicts. It offers a clear framework to guide family firm members, as well as their advisors, through the succession process.
During the last decades, freight transportation experienced a worldwide boom. At the same time, competition increased considerably, such that efficient cost structures are indispensable for any market player. One of the main challenges a transportation company faces is the efficient employment of its personnel in operations, commonly referred to as crew scheduling. In this book the author presents solution approaches to large-scale crew scheduling. Firstly, the implementation of state-of-the-art operations research methods for a setting at a major European freight railway carrier is presented. Secondly, the author discusses acceleration techniques that make the developed algorithms applicable even in short-term contexts. While the analysis is based on European freight railway settings, the gained insights also apply to other (crew) scheduling contexts. Potential readership includes scholars and graduate students who are interested in the fields of crew scheduling and column generation as well as practitioners from transportation companies looking for new planning approaches.
Die Globalisierung und Virtualisierung von Geschäftsbeziehungen vergrößert die Bedeutung und die Komplexität logistischer Herausforderungen. Das Management logistischer Netzwerke wird zu einem wesentlichen Wettbewerbsfaktor für Unternehmen. Das Buch wie die gleichnamige Tagung (September 2009) haben zum Ziel, den internationalen Gedankenaustausch und die Diskussion zwischen Wissenschaft und Praxis gezielt zu fördern, damit Strategien, Methoden und Werkzeuge entwickelt werden können, die es ermöglichen, den wachsenden Anforderungen gerecht zu werden.
Strategic alliances have emerged as an important element of firms' strategies. Following suit, research on alliances has blossomed, concentrating on the various forms alliances take, the reasons of their existence, and increasingly embracing questions of alliance management and governance tasks. However, most contributions which address the alliance governance problem are yet rather vague and selective in their conception of alliance governance structures as well as the factors which influence their suitability. The aim of this book is to further advance our understanding of alliance governance and to provide recommendations on the problem of alliance governance design. Following the configu...
In recent years, the design of contracts in supply chains has received significant attention from researchers and practitioners. Companies try to improve their profits by designing efficient contracts that ensure a high availability of the product at a low cost. In this book the author presents a quantitative approach for designing optimal supply chain contracts. Firstly, service level contracts, which are frequently used between a supplier and a manufacturer, are analyzed. For this contract type, optimal contract parameter combinations are identified that lead to a coordinated supply chain. Secondly, an optimal contract selection strategy is developed for a supply chain where a manufacturer can choose among multiple potential buyers. Potential readership includes scholars of supply chain management and management science, graduate students interested in these areas as well as interested practitioners involved in negotiating contracts.
Contract theory, which emphasizes the importance of unverifiable actions and private information, has been a highly active field of research in microeconomics in the last decades. This thesis is divided into two parts. Part I consists of three chapters that study contract-theoretic models which are motivated by the classic procurement problem of a principal who wants an agent to deliver a certain good or service. In such models it is typically assumed that decision makers are interested in their own monetary payoffs only. Moreover, they have unlimited cognitive abilities and behave in a perfectly rational way. Yet, in practice people often do not behave this way. While empirical research is very difficult in contract theory, laboratory experiments have recently turned out to be an important source of data. In Part II, three experimental studies are presented that investigate contract-theoretic problems brought up in Part I.