Managerial Productivity Research Articles

An integrated framework for continuous assessment and improvement of manufacturing systems

This paper presents an integrated framework for assessment and ranking of manufacturing systems based on management and organizational performance indicators. The integrated approach of this paper is based on principal component analysis. The validity of the model is verified and validated by numerical taxonomy and clustering analysis approach. Furthermore, the non-parametric correlation methods, namely, Spearman and Kendall-Tau correlation experiments should show high level of correlation between the findings of PCA and taxonomy. To achieve the objectives of this study, a comprehensive study was conducted to locate all economic and technical indicators which influence organizational performance. Sixty one indicators were identified and classified in five categories, namely, (1) financial, (2) customer satisfaction, (3) process innovation, (4) production process and (5) organizational learning and growth. These indicators are related to organizational and managerial productivity and efficiency. Two actual test problems and a random sample of 12 indicators were selected to show the applicability of the integrated approach. The results of PCA showed the weak and strong points of each sector in regard to the selected indicators. Furthermore, it identifies which indicators have the major impacts on the overall performance of industrial sectors. The modeling approach of this paper could be easily utilized for managerial and organizational ranking and analysis of other sectors. The results of such studies would help top managers to have better understanding and improve existing systems with respect to managerial and organizational performance.

Are perks purely managerial excess?

A widespread view is that executive perks exemplify agency problems—they are a route through which managers misappropriate a firm's surplus. Accordingly, firms with high free cash flow, operating in industries with limited investment prospects, should offer more perks, and firms subject to more external monitoring should offer fewer perks. The evidence for agency as an explanation of perks is, at best, mixed. Perks are, however, offered in situations in which they enhance managerial productivity. While we cannot rule out the occasional aberration, and while we have little to say on the overall level of perks, our findings suggest that treating perks purely as managerial excess is incorrect.

Electronic commerce adoption: an empirical study of small and medium US businesses

By combining two independent research streams, we examined the determinant factors of strategic value and adoption of electronic commerce as perceived by top managers in small and medium sized enterprises (SME) in the midwest region of the US. We proposed a research model that suggested three factors that have been found to be influential in previous research in the perception of strategic value of other information technologies: operational support, managerial productivity, and strategic decision aids. Inspired by the technology acceptance model and other relevant research in the area, we also identified four factors that influence electronic commerce adoption: organizational readiness, external pressure, perceived ease of use, and perceived usefulness. We hypothesized a causal link between the perceived strategic value of electronic commerce and electronic commerce adoption. To validate the research model, we collected data from top managers/owners of SME by using an Internet survey.

The Effects of Time Personality on the Productivity of MIS

The paper studies the relationship between information technology (IT), time personality and managerial productivity. Time personality is captured by concepts of polychronicity and monochronicity. They reflect an individual’s preference for being engaged in either many (polychronicity) or one (monochronicity) activity at a time block. The concepts of time personality, poly- and monochronicity are represented by a set of the temporal dimensions. In this paper we present a descriptive study in a form of survey, in which the temporal dimensions serve as mediators between IT and productivity. Analysis of the data shows the positive nature of the relationships between IT and productivity within the frames of the research design. We outlined some ideas on how personality issues can be addressed in the design of management information systems (MIS) so that a temporal symmetry between the manager’s preferences to poly-/monochronic behavior and IT capabilities could be reached.

Informativeness of Performance Measures in the Presence of Reporting Discretion

Accounting performance measures are the end products of a series of unobservable managerial product decisions, unobservable noise, and accounting choices. This paper develops conditions under which accounting performance measures generated by sequential production and reporting decisions can be useful for contracting purposes. It explains how production technology and reporting discretion distinctly influence the stewardship value of accounting performance measures. In particular, it shows that the reports are useful whenever managers have limited discretion and when the bounds of the reporting set are informative about managerial action. The implications of the model for standard setting and empirical research on contract efficiency are then discussed.

E-Commerce Adoption: Perceptions of Managers/Owners of Small and Medium Sized Firms in Chile

Although the adoption of e-commerce is widely studied in the industrialized world, only a small number of these studies focus on developing countries. An even smaller fraction of these studies focus on small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs), which account for a high percent of the economy generated in developing countries. In this study, managers/owners of SMEs in Chile identified variables that differentiate between adopters and non-adopters of e-commerce. The analysis suggests that Chilean managers/owners most receptive to adopting e-commerce possess the financial and technological resources to implement it, see e-commerce as increasing managerial productivity and supporting strategic decisions, feel external pressure to put e-commerce into operation, perceive e-commerce as compatible with preferred work practices and existing technology infrastructure, and perceive e-commerce as useful for their firms.

Bank mergers, the market for bank CEOs, and managerial incentives

After a large bank merger, the compensation of the surviving bank's CEO often increases materially. Theories of executive compensation based on managerial productivity and optimal incentives suggest that changes in CEO compensation are related to the potential gains from merger. Alternatively, compensation gains might result from an increase in bank size regardless of whether the merger creates value. We examine mergers among billion-dollar banks in the 1990s and find results consistent with managerial productivity. Specifically, we show empirically that changes in CEO compensation after mergers are positively related to anticipated gains from merger measured at the announcement date. Other changes in the structure of compensation are also consistent with hypotheses based on managerial productivity and incentive restructuring.

Multi-site aggregate production planning with multiple objectives: A goal programming approach

This paper addresses the problem of aggregate production planning (APP) for a multinational lingerie company in Hong Kong. The multi-site production planning problem considers the production loading plans among manufacturing factories subject to certain restrictions, such as production import/export quotas imposed by regulatory requirements of different nations, the use of manufacturing factories/locations with regard to customers' preferences, as well as production capacity, workforce level, storage space and resource conditions of the factories. In this paper, a multi-objective model is developed to solve the production planning problems, in which the profit is maximized but production penalties resulting from going over/under quotas and the change in workforce level are minimized. To enhance the practical implications of the proposed model, different managerial production loading plans are evaluated according to changes in future policy and situation. Numerical results demonstrate the robustness and effectiveness of the developed model.

Bank Mergers, the Market for Bank CEOs, and Managerial Incentives

After a large bank merger the compensation of the surviving bank's CEO often increases materially. Theories of executive compensation based on managerial productivity and optimal incentives suggest that changes in CEO compensation are related to the potential gains from merger. Alternatively, compensation gains might result from an increase in bank size regardless of whether the merger creates value. We examine mergers among billion-dollar banks in the 1990s and find results consistent with managerial productivity. Specifically, we show empirically that changes in CEO compensation after mergers are positively related to anticipated gains from merger measured at the announcement date. Other changes in the structure of compensation are also consistent with hypotheses based on managerial productivity and incentive restructuring.

Cultural and Sport Economics: Conceptual Twins?

Is there a role for sports economics in arts research? Despite references to similarities between the arts and sports (especially community impacts, demand interdependencies, and the presence of superstars), the two burgeoning literatures operate in near isolation from one another. This parochialism is not justified by legitimate distinctions; arts labor analysis, in particular, could benefit from sports research. This paper demonstrates this proposition with a focus on: team production functions and income dispersion; unions and rent distribution; managerial and director productivity; earnings functions and changing talent distributions related to competing superstar theories; and career development, screening and human capital theory.

An Empirical Study of the Measurement and Instrument Validation of Perceived Strategy Value of Information Systems

A number of frameworks have been proposed to study the competitive use of information systems. While these frameworks help in the choice of information systems to provide strategic use, the approval and funding of these systems depends solely on the business justification and strategic value of these applications as perceived by top management. The perception of strategic value of information systems (PSVIS) by top management is conceptualized as ii) an operational support type, ii) a managerial productivity enhancement type, and iii) a strategic decision aid type. An instrument was developed and validated to measure PSVIS. The instrument was associated with good reliability, convergent and discriminant validity values. The PSVIS constructs were also shown to be unidimensional using the limited factor analysis approach.

Supervision and effort in an intertemporal efficiency wage model: the role of the Solow condition

The Solow condition is examined in an intertemporal model that blends the shirking and the turnover models of efficiency wages with managerial supervision. It is shown that the Solow condition does not hold when shirking and turnover costs are considered. The Solow condition can be a possible outcome when managerial productivity offsets shirking and turnover costs.

Evaluating the Performance of Agricultural Bank Management: The Impact of State Regulatory Policies

AbstractWe evaluate agricultural bank management performance, focusing on the impacts of interstate banking laws on productivity change. The generalized Malmquist productivity index decomposes productivity change into technological change, technical efficiency change, and change in scale economies. While managerial productivity rose from 1982 to 1991, states that adopted the most liberal interstate banking laws experienced the greatest improvement in productivity. Large agricultural banks were more efficient in states that had more liberalized interstate banking laws while small agricultural banks fared better in states with more restrictive laws.

Reinterpreting the 1989 Pilots' Dispute: The Role of Managerial Control and Labour Productivity

Most accounts of the 1989 pilots dispute have focused on describing the progress of the dispute, analysing its relationship with the politics of the Accord or exposing the consequences of the parties ‘industrial and legal tactics. Surprisingly there has been little attempt to examine the origins and the effects of the dispute in the specific context of the domestic airline industry. This article argues that despite the role of the pilots' wage demands in triggering the dispute and the importance of the politics of the Accord in determining the course and outcome of the dispute, an important element throughout was the struggle over control of the labour process between airline employers, on the one hand, and pilots and their union, on the other. Issues of managerial control and pilot productivity were the underlying issues of the dispute and explain its immediate effects on pilots’ employment conditions in the aftermath of the dispute.

Integrated on line production and financial scheduling with intelligent autonomous agent based information system

This paper proposes a methodology to cope the development of a system achieving the integration of financial and production planning with on-line predictive/reactive transaction-oriented scheduling in batch process industries. The best solution of delivery dates is found taking into account the trade off between customer satisfaction (meeting due dates) and company liquidity (minimum net cash-flow constraint). The resulting schedules are improved by means of an objective function to be minimized under the constraint of minimum cash by a simulated annealing (SA) algorithm. Production schedules are updated with process data. Predictive models upgrading control set points and product recipes close the loop of the managerial production cycle. A planning layer with autonomous web-based agents in an order-entry information system is used to obtain a quick feedback and response of the whole system to order requests. This system architecture can be used in an inner-network information system within a manufacturing Networked Enterprise (NE). In addition to the knowledge in real time of the electronic market, the integrated system performs the status/usage profile of the resources including the net cash-flow. These new capabilities in scheduling assure better financial decisions and a quick response to clients, a response which is backed up with a system that outputs an updated optimal price-time trade-off of the order requested. The methodology is illustrated with a case study.

Quality as a source of empowerment

Among the three important managerial indicators, quality, cost and productivity, the human history of quality is far more long‐standing and quality is the only item of common concern to both manufacturer and customer: quality is a more “human” concept than either cost or productivity. Senior managers’ appeals to improve quality are more easily accepted and difficult to refuse than calls to cut cost or improve productivity. Quality is a powerful source of employees’ empowerment. A company’s basic business philosophy is of fundamental importance to make itself attractive to its employees and customers, as well as its shareholders, and to continue to develop healthily instead of merely pursuing profit. Because of the nature of this quality, it is extremely important to talk to everyone in the company about their basic philosophy regarding quality and the quality management activities to ensure that quality. Strong sense of responsibility of employees is indispensable to achieve the work aims, and the following two conditions must be fulfilled: the aims of the work must be clearly stated; and the people must be given as great a degree of freedom as possible in the means and methods by which they can achieve the aims. Also outlines the steps leading to creativity.

GAPS IN CORPORATE TRANSFORMATION

Today′s managers have an unprecedented opportunity to transform the capacity of companies, harness the talents of people and deliver value to customers. Managerial productivity could be increased by a factor of ten or more. This is not wild speculation, but a tantalizing prospect.

Using the Capital Market as a Monitor: Corporate Spinoffs in an Agency Framework

A model is developed in which corporate spinoffs are a feature of incentive contracts for product managers in diversified firms. I argue that the possibility of a future spinoff can improve current incentives for divisional managers, even if a spinoff rarely actually occurs. Spinoff incentive policies exploit the fact that after a spinoff, the stock value of the product line is a much cleaner signal of managerial productivity than when the division belongs to the parent firm. I show that providing current incentives through such a reorganization policy can dominate standard principal-agent contracts in highly diversified firms. Empirical implications of the model are developed regarding corporate spinoff behavior and the compensation of divisional managers.

Decision Support Systems in Singapore: Issues in their management and their beneficial contributions

A survey of 146 organizations in the key industry sectors of Singapore indicates a trend towards the use of computer-based Decision Support Systems (DSS) to support managers in decision making. The organizations consider four issues in the management of DSS critical to their success: (a) identification of managers' information and decision support needs, (b) selling the idea to top management, (c) effective planning and design of the support system, and (d) systems integration. The significant beneficial contributions of DSS: (a) are improved quality of information for decision making, (b) increased managerial productivity, and (c) support for achievement of competitive advantage. Cross-industry analysis of the data shows a high degree of consensus among industries on the ranking of critical management issues for the success of DSS and significant beneficial contributions of DSS.

The Microcomputer as an Effective Decision Support Tool in Managerial Productivity

The Microcomputer as an Effective Decision Support Tool in Managerial Productivity