Home Depot Research Articles

How to compute with data you can't see

Not long ago, hackers stole about 40 million debit- and credit-card records from Target, another 56 million records from Home Depot, and nearly 5 million patient records from hospital operator Community Health Systems. And this past June, personal information about millions of federal employees was taken from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management. These are just a few thunderclaps in the perfect storm of cyberattacks and data breaches making headlines recently.

Settlement Without Consent: Assessing the Credit Card Merchant Fee Class Action

The multi-district class action In re Payment Card Interchange Fee and Merchant Discount Antitrust Litigation has pitted the merchants that accept credit cards against the two largest card networks, Visa and MasterCard, and the thousands of banks issuing their cards. The merchants charged the banks with fixing the prices that businesses pay to accept cards. Last year, the parties’ attorneys announced a $7 billion settlement, the largest ever. But in exchange, all class members were required to accept (1) an injunction that did not alter the contested pricing practices and (2) a breathtakingly broad release. The settlement prohibited class members from opting out, deeming the injunctive relief class mandatory under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23(b)(2). Despite objections from over half the named plaintiffs and many other merchant class members, the District Court approved the settlement. Home Depot summed up the objectors’ view, arguing that the settlement “fails to address in any meaningful way the anticompetitive practices that are the subject of this litigation” and leaves “Visa and MasterCard . . . free to keep setting . . . fees exactly as they do now, free from any liability . . . .” Although Fed. R. Civ. P. 23 recognizes mandatory classes when a court enjoins conduct that necessarily impacts the entire class, the settlement here does not have that quality. Its principle feature—granting merchants the ability to surcharge credit card transactions—could be extended to some class members, but not others. Indeed, the settlement explicitly recognized this possibility, allowing Visa and MasterCard to negotiate bilateral agreements with individual merchants that prohibit surcharging. The court justified its decision on the ground that the merchants could not expect to do any better. They had a slim chance of winning the case and, even if they did, the court could not grant a more effective remedy than the right to surcharge. The court was wrong on all counts. Antitrust law requires price competition, and nothing about current credit card markets should exempt the largest banks from that requirement. And although commentators’ views on surcharging differ, they agree that the settlement as written does not grant merchants the flexibility necessary to create acceptance fee competition. Finally, if the merchants prevailed, the court could impose significantly more effective relief than the settlement provides. The credit card systems could operate as they do now with one exception. Merchants today must accept all cards issued on a network. The proposed relief would instead empower a merchant to refuse to accept the cards of a large card-issuing bank if that bank refused to offer the merchant an acceptance fee below the networks’ default interchange rate. This approach would force card issuers that are big enough to support their own system to bear the risk that a merchant would drop its cards while continuing to accept those issued by its competitors. Forcing a mandatory settlement without consent in these circumstances finds no support in Rule 23 and violates the fundamental public policy guaranteeing injured parties a day in court.

What is Living and What is Dead in the U.S. Declaration of Independence, or, National Treasure and the State of Public Texts

What is Living and What is Dead in the U.S. Declaration of Independence, or, National Treasure and the State of Public Texts Michael Epp (bio) For if it is true that all thought begins with remembrance, it is also true that no remembrance remains secure unless it is condensed and distilled into a framework of conceptual notions within which it can further exercise itself. Experiences and even the stories which grow out of what men do and endure, of happenings and events, sink back into the futility inherent in the living word and the living deed unless they are talked about over and over again. What saves the affairs of mortal men from their inherent futility is nothing but this incessant talk about them, which in its turn remains futile unless certain concepts, certain guideposts for future remembrance, and even for sheer reference, arise out of it. Hannah Arendt “The Revolutionary Tradition and Its Lost Treasure” On Revolution The Home Depot, Captain Kirk, and the doi On 4 July 2001, the Declaration of Independence (doi) Road Trip celebrated the second day of its official launch in Philadelphia. Sponsored by The Home Depot and founded by television and film producer Norman Lear, the Road Trip sought to bring “the ‘People’s Document’ to the people” [End Page 191] by carrying a Dunlap copy of the Declaration around the United States. The doi Road Trip was specifically geared toward “young people,” aiming “to inspire them to participate in civic activism, to exercise their rights, and above all, to vote.” Throughout the tour, creative, even bizarre ways of presenting the text were practised, including a “once-in-a-lifetime” presentation of the doi at a nascar race at the Daytona International Speedway on 4 July 2003, in which the copy of the Declaration was accompanied by Tony Stewart racing Home Depot’s doi-themed Chevrolet. But during the launch two years earlier, the people were presented with an even stranger spectacle, for the centrepiece “was an unprecedented live dramatic reading of the Declaration featuring distinguished actors, including Mel Gibson, Morgan Freeman, Kathy Bates, Michael Douglas, Whoopi Goldberg, and Kevin Spacey.” The performance of the text of the doi was broadcast nationally, and live, by abc for their Fourth of July special.1 It was, of course, a simpler time. The terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 were still two months away, and when Mel Gibson began the reading with “When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands” his words resonated more with his performance in Braveheart than they bumped uncomfortably against his disturbing rants to police. That summer, the road trip was simply resurrecting a particular text—the copy of the doi bought by Lear from a man in Philadelphia who found it underneath a painting he bought “for four dollars at a flea market in 1989”—while bringing-the-People’s-Document-to-the-people in a national political context still humming with complacent positivity after the boom of the late 1990s. Perhaps this accounts for the sombre clothing and serious facial expressions of the actors, who read the doi from large theatrical folios, practising a kind of simulacrum of a grave dramatic reading. The incredible difficulty, indeed absurdity, of specifically performing a text that was never written to be entertaining, can perhaps be granted the gravitas it desperately seeks by virtue of the high stakes assigned to the reading itself, that is, the determination to reach the young people and get them to vote. But as a dramatic performance, the strangeness of the reading dominates any other impression. Not only is the language of the doi awkwardly out of place in a twenty-first-century television broadcast, the serious tone [End Page 192] of the reading underscores the fact that the precise political position the doi addresses can only be applied anachronistically to today. The dramatic reading of the denunciation, the list of grievances against the King, is (unsurprisingly) especially bizarre. Drawing on Pauline Maier’s work on the making of the declaration, American Scripture, Jodi Dean explains that, even at the time of the writing of the declaration, the...

Corporate Profiles

The Boeing Co. The Home Depot Inc. Macy's Inc. Las Vegas Sands Corp. Air Products and Chemicals Inc. Northern Trust Corp. Illinois Tool Works Inc. TravelCenters of America LLC

Hackers' Bazaar: The Markets for Cybercrime Tools and Stolen Data

MALICIOUS hackers and cyberattacks are getting more attention these days--a result of both an uptick in the number amount of attacks as well as of increased public attention and fascination. 2014 was the year the hack went viral. Notable data breaches included those at retail giants Target and Home Depot, health-care provider Community Health Systems, financial institution J.P. Morgan Chase, and entertainment giant Sony. For the retail sector in particular, the stolen data from these hacks appeared within days on black market sites. These cyber black markets offer the computer-hacking tools and services to enable and carry out cybercrime attacks, as well as the byproducts from those attacks the stolen credit cards, personally identifiable information, and intellectual property. The RAND Corporation, with support from Juniper Networks, wanted to under stand the landscape and the character of these cybercrime black markets: what the markets look like today, where they came from, as well as where we're headed in the future. To do so, we sought out and interviewed experts ranging from academics, to Different Types of Cyber Threat are distinguished by motivation and intent: * Cybercriminals: use cyber means to go after financial data * Nation-States: use cyber means to monitor, exploit, or attack * Hacktivists: use cyber means to send a message, sometimes politically motivated * Cyber-terrorists: use cyber means to recruit, spread propaganda, or instill fear security researchers, reporters, security vendors and law enforcement personnel folks who have a personal connection to these markets, from a variety of angles. We also reviewed literature and technical reports on this topic and personally observed some of the marketplace forums and websites. The markets for cybercrime tools and stolen data have become so pervasive and accessible that the malicious hacking trade today can for some people in certain aspects be more lucrative and easier to carry out than the illegal drug trade. The hacking trade has matured into specialized markets, in which those who have gained the greatest access deal freely in its tools and spoils: exploit kits (software for creating, distributing, and managing attacks), bot-nets (remotely controlled computers used for sending spam or flooding websites), as-a-service offerings (hacking for hire), compromised hosts, and a continually flooded market for stolen credit-card numbers and other personal credentials. These markets are dispersed, diverse, and segmented; constantly changing and innovating to both keep pace with consumer trends as well as to prevent law-enforcement and security vendors from understanding them. They come in many forms. Some are dedicated to one product or a specialized service. Others offer a range of goods and services for a full lifecycle of an attack--from the tools needed to exploit a system, all the way through to the cyber laundering of the stolen goods. I. The Current State of These Markets: Where Are We Now? Today, the markets for cybercrime tools and stolen data are quite advanced. Cybercrime markets are rapidly growing, maturing, and continuously innovating. They are full of increasingly sophisticated organizations, people, products, and methods for communicating and conducting business transactions. They are resilient in the face of takedowns and constantly adapting to new tactics and techniques of law enforcement and computer security vendors. Finally, they are easy to enter. Cyber Crime markets: The collection of skilled and unskilled suppliers, vendors, potential buyers, and intermediaries for goods or services to facilitate digitally based crimes (e.g., stealing financial data, ecommerce accounts, and social media credentials; intellectual property theft; and takedowns of sites) II. How Did We Get Here? Less than 15 years ago, cybercrime was committed by ad hoc networks of individuals motivated largely by ego and notoriety, who mostly wanted to get on to systems and prove themselves to one another. …

Using Social Marketing to Spur Residential Adoption of ENERGY STAR®-Certified LED Lighting

Recent technological advancements in lighting have produced light bulbs that are dramatically more efficient than the traditional incandescent bulb. Yet despite these benefits, the marketplace has been slow to adopt these newer and more efficient bulbs. To help facilitate this change, the Environmental Protection Agency’s ENERGY STAR program conducted a series of pilot behavior change campaigns to encourage residents to purchase and install ENERGY STAR-certified light-emitting diode (LED) lights. Campaigns were conducted with Duke Energy and Efficiency Vermont aimed at encouraging residents to purchase and install certified LED lighting in their homes. The campaigns used community-based social marketing (CBSM) as the platform for developing the overarching strategy and were developed to highlight the benefits of certified LED lights and to decrease the barriers. In Vermont, a school-based fund-raiser was used to promote certified LED bulbs, and in North Carolina, special in-store lighting events were held at Home Depot and Costco retail locations. Both programs were implemented using a control group, and quantitative outcomes were tracked. Reported results highlight the increase in sales of certified LEDs associated with the campaigns. Survey data are also reported from participants in the two campaigns, along with tests for spillover of the newly adopted behavior into other lighting purchases and behaviors. The lessons learned from these two CBSM pilots are synthesized into turnkey materials that can be adopted by other organizations looking to promote the adoption of LED lights.

Securing the point of sale

Retailers have been in the news for all the wrong reasons over the past year. In late 2013, US retailer Target was the subject of a point of sale (POS) malware hack at its stores affecting as many as 40 million customers who saw their credit and debit cards potentially compromised – along with 70 million customer account details. More recently, US DIY behemoth Home Depot was hit by what it described as ‘unique, custom-built malware' in a cyber-attack estimated to have put payment card information at risk for approximately 56 million customers. The malware is believed to have been present between April and September 2014.

Service outsourcing and disaster response methods in a relief supply chain

Private enterprises, such as Wal-Mart and Home Depot, have implemented effective relief efforts in responding to Hurricane Katrina in 2005. From the perspective of operation research, the factors of this success have been addressed as quick response, pre-position and logistic expertise. However, the waste made by FEMA for stockpiling food and ice in anticipation of a busy hurricane season in 2006 and several other cases indicate otherwise. In this paper, we introduce the private enterprise into a relief supply chain and propose an outsourcing framework to uncover the reason of Wal-Mart’s success and provide explanations to the counter-cases. Our study shows that the effective relief effort carried out by private enterprises in responding to Hurricane Katrina in 2005 attributes to the combination of proactive response method and logistic expertise. Our findings advocate adopting different strategies to deal with different types of relief supplies. Specifically, the proactive insourcing strategy is good enough for a relief supply chain involving only imperishable relief supplies. For perishable goods, the proactive outsourcing strategy can make a relief supply more efficient.

Edgy

Edgy Jack L. B. Gohn (bio) The heart wants what the heart wants, as Woody Allen tells us. And the heart will generally not be denied. But that is only half the story. The loins also have wants, and they are just as inflexible as the heart. This turns out to be a problem for nearly everyone, because our hearts and our loins so often want incompatible things. The incompatibility was arrestingly explored by two brave and iconoclastic works about sex I saw a day apart in the same place, Theatre Row on 42nd Street. One was Toni Bentley’s adaptation of her own erotic memoir, The Surrender, a one-woman show with Laura Campbell standing in for Bentley. The other was Intimacy, by Thomas Bradshaw, staged by the New Group. The shows are brave for the forthrightness with which they deal with their subject. Sex and sexuality may be ubiquitous in the theater, but extreme honesty about these things is a lot rarer. Even today, for instance, there are usually limits to the depiction and the discussion of sex onstage. These shows, particularly Intimacy, simply brush almost all limits aside. [End Page 408] (Actual erections as part of the performance are, to pick an example, a new one on me—at least on that block of 42nd Street and in this century.) The shows are iconoclastic for the potentially unpopular things they say. One potentially unpopular thing said in The Surrender would be that a (mostly) straight woman loves anal sex. The iconography of the act (male superior, woman not) sorts awkwardly with the feminist ideals most of us like to think we share. Yet if Bentley has one theme, it is that her greatest release occurs precisely when she is most objectified, most, to use her own word, slutty. (“Anal sex is about cooperation. Cooperation in an endeavor of aristocratic politics, involving rigid hierarchies, feudal positions, and monarchist attitudes.”) One could take issue with this analysis by contending Bentley is “topping from the bottom” (in all senses of the word), but this facile formula really fails to do justice to Bentley’s feelings and views. No, if Bentley is saying anything at all about this contradiction, she is saying that the “sluttiness” (anal and otherwise) she practiced with the lover she called A-Man and with others may not have contradicted so much as ignored all elevated notions of human dignity, and that orgasm trumps theory. In so postulating, she is not falling into the opposite fallacy, the one championed by de Sade and Story of O, for instance, that the male-superior position truly bespeaks degradation, or that degradation is mystically liberating. Her point is simply that the loins want what the loins want. Bentley may be looking for what she calls “the joy that lies on the other side of convention,” but it is not the unconventionality per se that she craves. Just the joy. She has another leg up on those French writers, de Sade and Réage, as well. The 120 Days of Sodom and Story of O have to take place in neverlands, fantasized chateaux where perversity can flourish in a way that reality and the laws would never permit elsewhere. Bentley, by contrast, makes her argument out of what she claims is actual experience. Her claims are believable, illustrated with a thousand piquant details conveying the ring of truth, like the gym-rat environment where she meets A-Man (and a redheaded woman who serves for a time as their mutual lover), or the way she encounters a born-again Christian (whose backsliding she prompts) while cutting dowels at a Home Depot. The Surrender, then, seems dedicated throughout to honesty about sexual reality. Intimacy at least starts out the same way. This seven-character play, built around the ubiquity of masturbation, pornography, and the sexual fantasies that fuel them, is like Schnitzler’s La Ronde in depicting a circle of tangentially associated individuals whose sexual secrets end up linking them together in unacknowledged ways. The play takes for granted, as did Kinsey, that masturbation is pretty much a universal behavior, at least for men, and that pornography, the ultimate masturbatory...

Russell Means: Why He Matters to You

Russell MeansWhy He Matters to You Bayard Johnson (bio) “Wake up, there’s a war goin’ on.” This was Russell Means’s way of waking you up when he called at zero-dark-thirty in the morning, starting his day. Russell always got up with the Morning Star. But on this Monday morning, October 22, Russell Means’s wife, Pearl, was on the phone. She was calling to tell us that Russell had joined the ancestors earlier that morning. He walked on with the Morning Star. A little over a year before, Russell and Pearl stopped by for dinner. His neck was swollen and puffy, swallowing and talking were painful. He’d just come from a doctor’s appointment. “On Monday,” he said as he sat down at the table, “they’re going to give me my ETA to the Spirit World.” When the doctor told Russell he had terminal cancer, Russell turned to look at Pearl to see how she was taking the news. They told him his best option was a radical tracheotomy. He would be confined to a wheelchair, unable to walk, talk, eat, or swallow. Life expectancy was two months to two years. “Sure, they’d like to cut out my tongue,” said Russell. “Forget it.” The Indian way is that everyone has a turn to talk, and everyone else listens politely. Russell taught me that early on. When everyone agrees, the argument, if there was one, is over. Many people wrote about Russell after he left. Some comments were insightful, some asinine, the rest in between. In some respects it was like hearing blind men trying to describe an elephant. Everyone talked about different aspects of Russell—things the commentator cared [End Page 34] about. Often they seemed to be describing entirely different people. Russell took on a special and unique meaning for every writer. Those who didn’t like his criticism of the Sandinistas accused him of being a self-promoting publicity hound. Those who admired Russell’s willingness to die for principles they agreed with described him as a prophet and holy man, a hero who led from the front, his generation’s Crazy Horse. Most interesting, in a way, were the critiques of Russell’s motives written by people who had never met him, weren’t well informed on the issues, but felt compelled to lend their insights anyway. It’s inevitable that people will talk about heroes, and form opinions about them, and then try to cram their opinion down your throat. Russell was personally offended by a big green sign near the start of Interstate 10 in Santa Monica: “Christopher Columbus Transcontinental Highway.” Russell was very public with his opinion that any society that could worship Christopher Columbus as a hero is seriously deranged. Slaver, murderer, pedophile, bad navigator—the list goes on. The sign on Interstate 10 is often splattered with red paint. Russell had a better idea: “We’re takin’ out that sign.” Someone had a pickup truck we could borrow, and we could rent a chain saw at Home Depot. The plan was to cut down the sign, throw it in the back of the pickup, drive it up to South Dakota, and post it on the driveway leading to his ranch, formerly the Indian agent’s house, in Porcupine, South Dakota. That way, the CC Transcon Highway would be about a quarter-mile long, and at the end of it, Russell Means would be waiting for you. It’s the end of the month, rent is due . . . pay up. Over forty years ago, on the 405 in LA, Russell Means was a fugitive, pulled over on the side of the freeway, jacklighted by a dozen cop spotlights, with ten guns trained on him, and a bullhorn telling him, “For the last time, raise your hands over your head!” Russell said to himself, “I’m not doing it.” What was going through his mind as he heard the “click-click-click” of cops cocking their revolvers? “Mother, I’m coming home.” All day Monday we waited for information about the memorial service. In Lakotah spirituality, the spirit of the departed is released on the fourth...

Evaluating a Product Donation Program: Challenges for Charitable Capacity

AbstractThis article offers one of the first efforts at describing the impact of a national product donation program. Despite the importance of in‐kind giving to the corporate and charitable sectors, little research has explained how in‐kind gifts are used effectively once they leave the donor's hands. In this study we examine outcomes and impacts associated with a product donation program, including numbers served, a faith‐based mission, the ability to process product donations effectively, the extent of performance measurement, and the effect of program experience on continued participation. Data come from Good360's Framing Hope program, a partnership between The Home Depot stores and local charities across the United States. Our findings support the organizational capacity literature in suggesting that experience with this program only partly mitigates the challenges of participation and that success may be due to how central the program is to organizational objectives.

Before Setting a Course to Learn, Know Thyself

A professor tells her preservice students to be aware that all their students have traveled different paths to the classroom and that getting students to understand their varying paths and those of each other is fundamental to learning.

The Influence of Sport Sponsorship Communication on Sport Fans’ Rating of Retail Service Quality

Sport sponsorship has grown tremendously as the development of sport media, and popular companies such as Coca-Cola, Nike, Toyota, and Samsung have used sport sponsorship as one of their marketing communication channels. In addition, retailers (e.g., Home Depot, Target, Lotte Department Store) have become involved in sponsorship to achieve their marketing communication goals. Although many retail companies have invested in sponsorship, no retailer-specific sponsorship study has been suggested. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to propose a new sponsorship-effect measure using retail service quality (R-SERVQUAL). This study hypothesized that brand recall and team identification would influence R-SERVQUAL. The 2-way ANOVA revealed that the mean scores of R-SERVQUAL were high when sport fans’ brand recall (F = 12.58, p < .001) and team identification (F = 65.88, p < .001) were high, and R-SERVQUAL is suggested as a tool to evaluate the effects of sponsorship communication on the retail industry.

The Price of Discrimination: The Nature of Class Action Employment Litigation and Its Effects

This article analyzes the recent wave of large class action employment discrimination suits to determine their effects on the firms that are sued and the members of the plaintiff class. The first part of the paper includes an event study that measures the effect the lawsuits and their settlements have on stock prices of the companies that are sued, and the second part of the paper involves three case studies (Texaco, Home Depot and Denny's) to explore how the lawsuits actually change corporate practices. The study finds that the lawsuits do not generally affect stock prices, and rarely provide meaningful benefits to the plaintiff class. Although the damages obtained in the cases are substantial, they are generally not sufficient to affect large corporations, which also means that the lawsuits are unlikely to provide a sufficient deterrent against discrimination. An important subsidiary finding of the study is that employment discrimination class actions have lost their public nature and have evolved into private tort claim where there is little public oversight. The last part of the article proposes several reform measures, including increasing damages available in employment discrimination suits, and imposing a public monitoring function on the settlement.

Innovation Management: Part 2 A Breakthrough Approach to Organizational Excellence: Profiles of Successful Innovators

In part one of this article on innovation management we address the theory and practices related to managing innovation within an organization. Probably the best way to demonstrate the effectiveness and application of innovation management is through the use of real case studies. Theoretical concepts often create new thought patterns that sometimes work and more often result in failure. It's only when we apply these concepts to real applications that the proof of the pudding is realized. In part two of this article we will provide a series of case studies that document real applications and results of applying innovation management within organizations. It is our belief that through the review of the surreal life experiences you'll gain a deep insight into the practical application of innovation management and be more able to provide examples of innovation. The following organizations are used as examples to demonstrate innovation principles: Tyson Food, Hughes Aircraft, DirecTV, Thomas Edison GE, Bristol-Myers Squibb, BMW, KB home builders, GE, Callaway Golf, Phillips Electronics, Eureka Ranches, Motel 6, Southwest Airlines, Men's Wearhouse, Virgin Atlantic, Home Depot, Amway, Mary Kay, Tupperware Avon, Dell, J.D. Power & Associates, among others.

A simple model for the multiple traveling salesmen problem with single depot and multiple sink

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to determine a set of routes for multiple salesmen starting at and turning back to the home depots. The objective of the algorithm is to be efficient and to minimize the total cost of all salesmen.Design/methodology/approachThe new method first generates a SModel, then deletes all redundant edges in the model and reorganizes isolated paths. According to the given statistics, about 16.5 percent of the nodes have a degree greater than 2 in the SModel, which means that there must be redundant edges in the model. The authors refer to those edges connected to nodes with a degree greater than 2 as redundant candidate edges. By deleting redundant edges, the original graph is simplified to a great extent, then related operation is adopted to generate expected result.FindingsA simple model is used to simplify the original graphs by deleting redundant edges. Based on the simplified results, two strategies are proposed to determine primal edges linking with home depot. Simulations are carried out to illustrate the performance of the proposed method.Research limitations/implicationsAlthough new method can efficiently solve the variance of multiple traveling salesmen problem (MTSP) with multiple salesmen open path, it does not consider the workload balance. To a great extent, the total course time of this variance of MTSP is decided by the last achieved salesman's time cost.Practical implicationsThis method can be used to simulate many everyday applications such as transportation logistics, job planning, vehicle scheduling, and so on. The main applications include print press scheduling, crew scheduling, school bus routing, mission planning, and the design of global navigation satellite surveying system networks. Moreover, it can be used to solve the problem of multiple traveling robots, and can be considered as a relaxation of the vehicle routing problem (VRP) with the capacity restrictions removed.Originality/valueThis paper proposes a new method to solve a heterogeneous MTSP with multiple depots and open paths. A simple model (SModel) is introduced to implement it. The model can transform a complicated graph into a simplified one. Based on the model, the subsequent workings of the new method involve merely linking paths together. Based on SModel, the greatest advantage of the new method is that it can find a global solution efficiently.

Management Insights

Management Insights

Culture Determines Business Models: Analyzing Home Depot's Failure Case in China for International Retailers from a Communication Perspective

AbstractThis article is a result of a longitudinal case study regarding Home Depot's operation in China. From 2006 to 2011, the author conducted 37 in‐depth interviews with Home Depot executives, managers, lawyers, employees, suppliers, and consumers, as well as its Western and Chinese competitors. These interviews generated 500+ pages of transcripts and field notes. Home Depot entered China in 2006 by acquiring 12 stores from a Chinese company, Home Way. However, by September 2012 all Home Depot stores in China had been closed.This interview‐based single‐case‐study research has these notable contributions. First, this research stresses the importance of host culture in creating a business model when an international retailer expands to a foreign country. Second, the research develops a new Host Culture Analysis Framework: CELM (host Culture, business Environment, target consumer Lifestyle, and target consumer Mentality). Third, by applying the CELM framework to the Chinese market, this research suggests that Home Depot could have replaced its ineffective DIY (Do‐It‐Yourself) model with the new DIFM (Do‐It‐for‐Me) business model for China. Fourth, this article proposes a new urban boutique store (UBS) retail format for international retailers entering emerging markets. Finally, this research shows that in‐depth interview is a solid research method to be applied to case studies, for the discovery of deeper reasons of international expansion failures. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Managing Social, Environmental and Financial Performance Simultaneously

The significant challenge of trying to simultaneously manage social, environmental and financial performance is one of the most critical challenges in the field of corporate sustainability. This paper explores how large, complex, for-profit organizations are actually integrating this challenge into decision-making and implementing sustainability. Based on field research with interviews at Nike, Procter & Gamble, The Home Depot and Nissan North America, the study specifically investigates how managers at various levels are making the trade-offs and simultaneously managing social, environmental and financial performance. We find that, while the companies' informal systems strongly promote sustainability, their formal systems seemingly have a very traditional focus on financial performance. But, the managers operating under these paradoxical systems do not believe these systems to be in conflict, and they do not perceive a high level of tension. They recognize the financial value of stakeholder reactions to social and environmental performance, and this minimizes the magnitude of the loss in a “win-lose” scenario, or, when the value of these impacts exceeds the cost of an initiative, turns it into a “win-win” scenario.

The mixed-product assembly line sequencing problem of a door-lock company in Taiwan

This paper investigates the mixed-product assembly line sequencing problem in the door-lock manufacturing industry. Companies in the door-lock industries schedule their production processes to minimize their costs while meeting customer demand. The variances and diversities of each lock’s components complicate the mixed-product assembly line sequencing problem and directly influence the material requirement planning and human resource costs. In the current research, we study one of the largest ironware manufacturing companies in Asia, company F. For this company, an export-oriented strategy makes its main products (such as door locks and door closers) available around the globe. The primary customers of company F are the largest home improvement co-op stores (such as Home Depot, Lowe’s and True Value in the US) from the region of North America. The sales from this region account for over 80% of company F’s total sales. The remaining company sales are geographically distributed around the world in areas such as Europe, Asia and Australia. However, as labor cost is the major concern, this company seeks supply sources in southeast Asia, China and Taiwan. In this paper, we analyze company F and formulate an integer programming mathematical model with constraints regarding production lines, labor, warehouse capacity and order fulfillment rates to minimize the total cost. The customer demand is derived from real data from company F. We use the branch and bound algorithm (CPLEX) to solve this problem and analyze the results. Salient results and practical issues involved in this unique problem are discussed in detail in this paper.