Browsing by Department "Business Administration"
- Results Per Page
- Sort Options
Item Open Access A Household Level Model of Television Viewing with Implications for Advertising Targeting(2015) Deng, YitingTelevision (TV) is the predominant advertising medium, and recent technological advances such as digital video recorders (DVRs) and set-top boxes (STBs) have the potential to transform this industry by enabling household-specific advertising. Since exposure to TV represents a substantial share of consumer time and attention, this potential to micro-target communications represents an enormous opportunity for the TV advertising market.
This paper outlines an approach to facilitate the micro-targeting of TV advertising. We employ a unique dataset, integrating TV program and advertisement viewing at the household level with purchase data, to address the question of how advertisers can achieve better advertising targeting in the digital context. Based on this dataset, we first develop a model of household TV viewing behavior. The viewing model comprises three integrated components: TV show sampling and watching, TV show recording, and advertising viewing. All three components are motivated by the theoretical concept of flow utility, that is, the moment-by-moment enjoyment a household derives from different activities: watching a TV show, watching a TV advertisement, and other non-TV activities. This model has decent out-of-sample prediction power on show choices and time spent on each selected show. We then link household advertising exposure with purchase. Finally, the viewing model and identified advertising-sales relationship are utilized to conduct counterfactual policy experiments on advertising targeting. We consider several household-level targeting scenarios by manipulating: 1) whether the advertising purchase is made in advance; and 2) whether the objective function is to minimize costs for a given set of exposures or to maximize revenues from advertising. Results indicate micro-targeting can lower advertising costs and raise incremental revenue.
The key contributions of this paper are as follows. Theoretically, we develop an integrated model on TV show viewing, TV advertising viewing, purchasing and advertising targeting. Methodologically, we propose a new modeling framework on media consumption by explicitly accounting for the role of uncertainty, and propose targeting strategies leveraging household-level data. Substantively, we offer policy recommendations to advertisers on micro-targeting which can be of great potential.
Item Open Access A Multi-Dimensional Approach to Social Relationships in Consumer Behavior(2020) Gullo, KelleyWhile consumer research has long explored social influences in consumer phenomena, the literature rarely considers the implications of different dynamics in relationships. In this dissertation, I take a multi-dimensional perspective on social relationships in consumer behavior. In Chapter 1, I develop a conceptual framework of social relationships that situates different types of relationships along three theoretically orthogonal and consumer-relevant relational dimensions: closeness, competitiveness, and power. I argue that these key relational dimensions jointly shape consumer phenomena in important ways. Then, in Chapter 2, I provide an empirical demonstration of this framework in the context of a novel source of social influence: the effect of making consumption choices for different types of others. I focus on two theoretically relevant relational dimensions, closeness and competitiveness, and show across eight experiments that making goal-related consumption choices for others can influence subsequent goal-related choices for the self, depending on the type of relationship with the other. I conclude by considering the practical and theoretical implications of taking a multi-dimensional approach to consumer behavior.
Item Open Access A Multiple Goal Perspective on Eating Behavior(2016) Liu, Peggy JieAlthough people frequently pursue multiple goals simultaneously, these goals often conflict with each other. For instance, consumers may have both a healthy eating goal and a goal to have an enjoyable eating experience. In this dissertation, I focus on two sources of enjoyment in eating experiences that may conflict with healthy eating: consuming tasty food (Essay 1) and affiliating with indulging dining companions (Essay 2). In both essays, I examine solutions and strategies that decrease the conflict between healthy eating and these aspects of enjoyment in the eating experience, thereby enabling consumers to resolve such goal conflicts.
Essay 1 focuses on the well-established conflict between having healthy food and having tasty food and introduces a novel product offering (“vice-virtue bundles”) that can help consumers simultaneously address both health and taste goals. Through several experiments, I demonstrate that consumers often choose vice-virtue bundles with small proportions (¼) of vice and that they view such bundles as healthier than but equally tasty as bundles with larger vice proportions, indicating that “healthier” does not always have to equal “less tasty.”
Essay 2 focuses on a conflict between healthy eating and affiliation with indulging dining companions. The first set of experiments provides evidence of this conflict and examine why it arises (Studies 1 to 3). Based on this conflict’s origins, the second set of experiments tests strategies that consumers can use to decrease the conflict between healthy eating and affiliation with an indulging dining companion (Studies 4 and 5), such that they can make healthy food choices while still being liked by an indulging dining companion. Thus, Essay 2 broadens the existing picture of goals that conflict with the healthy eating goal and, together with Essay 1, identifies solutions to such goal conflicts.
Item Open Access A Theory and Test of How Speakers with Nonnative Accents are Evaluated in Entrepreneurial Settings(2016) Zhou Koval, ChristyAn abundance of research in the social sciences has demonstrated a persistent bias against nonnative English speakers (Giles & Billings, 2004; Gluszek & Dovidio, 2010). Yet, organizational scholars have only begun to investigate the underlying mechanisms that drive the bias against nonnative speakers and subsequently design interventions to mitigate these biases. In this dissertation, I offer an integrative model to organize past explanations for accent-based bias into a coherent framework, and posit that nonnative accents elicit social perceptions that have implications at the personal, relational, and group level. I also seek to complement the existing emphasis on main effects of accents, which focuses on the general tendency to discriminate against those with accents, by examining moderators that shed light on the conditions under which accent-based bias is most likely to occur. Specifically, I explore the idea that people’s beliefs about the controllability of accents can moderate their evaluations toward nonnative speakers, such that those who believe that accents can be controlled are more likely to demonstrate a bias against nonnative speakers. I empirically test my theoretical model in three studies in the context of entrepreneurial funding decisions. Results generally supported the proposed model. By examining the micro foundations of accent-based bias, the ideas explored in this dissertation set the stage for future research in an increasingly multilingual world.
Item Open Access A Theory, Measure, and Empirical Test of Subgroups in Work Teams(2011) Carton, Andrew MasciaAlthough subgroups are a central component of work teams, they have remained largely unexamined by organizational scholars. In three chapters, a theory and measure of subgroups are developed and then tested. The theory introduces a typology of subgroups and a depiction of the antecedents and consequences of subgroups. The measure, called the subgroup algorithm, determines the most dominant configurations of subgroups in real work teams--those that are most likely to influence team processes and outcomes. It contrasts the characteristics within a subgroup or set of subgroups versus the characteristics between subgroups or a set of subgroups for every potential configuration of subgroups on every work team in a given sample. The algorithm is tested with a simulation, with results suggesting that it adds value to the methodological literature on subgroups. The empirical test uses the subgroup algorithm to test key propositions put forth in the theory of subgroups. First, it is predicted that teams will perform better when identity-based subgroups are unequal in size and knowledge-based subgroups are equal in size. Second, it is predicted that, although teams will perform better with an increasing number of both identity-based and knowledge-based subgroups, there will be a discontinuity in this linear function for identity-based subgroups: teams with two identity-based subgroups will perform more poorly than teams with any other number of identity-based subgroups. The subgroup algorithm is used to test these predictions in a sample of 326 work teams. Results generally support the predictions.
Item Open Access Accrual Noise Ratio as a Measure of Accrual Reliability(2009) Njoroge, KennethI develop an empirical model that estimates a firm-specific accrual noise ratio (ANR), an operational and statistically grounded measure of accrual reliability, and test the measure's construct validity. The model allows accrual reliability to vary across firms, which is particularly important because many reliability determinants vary in cross-section. Unlike metrics that measure relative perceived reliability, ANR measures accrual reliability independent of the perceptions of investors, creditors or auditors. I find that ANR relates in expected ways with multiple proxies of accounting reliability, that ANR's relation with the proxies of other accounting constructs is consistent with theory, and that ANR's sensitivity to percentage changes of accrual components is consistent with a subjective ordinal ranking of the components' reliability from prior literature.
Item Open Access Action Simulations in Acquisition Cost Estimates(2009) Tal, AnerConsumers often lack objective information about product acquisition costs. In such cases, consumers must rely on estimates of acquisition costs in making their choices. The current work examines the influence of mental simulations of product acquisition on estimates of acquisition costs. We suggest that simulations of product acquisition lead estimates to reflect the influence of consumers' current physical states on the experience of a particular cost. Specifically, carrying a heavy burden leads consumers to estimate higher distances to targets when they engage in simulation of walking to targets, but not when they do not engage in such simulation.
Simulation can be either deliberate or spontaneous. Deliberate simulation is engaged when consumers intentionally simulate an action. Spontaneous simulation requires particular conditions for its occurrence, but does not require conscious intent. The specific conditions for the occurrence of spontaneous simulation are the availability of situational inputs and that action be possible in the given situation. We support these ideas in a series of studies.
Study 1 demonstrates preference shifts that occur as a consequence of participants carrying heavy burdens. Participants in this study shifted their preference from an option located a visible but undefined distance away towards one that was available at their current location. Study 2 supports the theory that this shift occurs as a consequence of alterations in estimates of acquisition costs by showing that burdened participants estimate distances as greater than do unburdened participants.
Study 3 provides evidence for the role of mental simulation in producing such changes in estimated acquisition costs by showing that the distance expansion first demonstrated in study 2 occurs when targets are visible, but not when targets are not visible. This result is consistent with the central contention of this dissertation that visibility is critical for spontaneous simulation. Together, the studies support the role of spontaneous simulation in burden leading to distance expansion. Study 4 provides further support for the role of simulation in producing the effects of physical state on estimated acquisition costs by showing deliberate simulation results in similar distance to that of spontaneous simulation.
Studies 5 and 6 further demonstrate the dual roles of spontaneous and deliberate simulation on distance expansion. They show that expansion does not occur when targets are not reachable because they are up in the air (study 5). However, deliberate simulation of realistic (climbing - study 5) or unrealistic (flying - study 6) action restores distance expansion in those circumstances, supporting the role of simulation in leading to consideration of physical state in estimated acquisition costs.
The final study ties together these results by demonstrating the effects of both spontaneous and deliberate simulation in a single setting. Varying both the availability of conditions supporting spontaneous simulation and instructions for deliberate simulation the study allows an examination of the comparative effects of the two types of simulation and of their potential interaction. The study finds that deliberate simulation may produce effects that are larger than those of spontaneous simulation, but spontaneous simulation does not seem to enhance the effects of deliberate simulation.
Item Open Access Adding by Subtracting: The Impact of Performance Feedback on Divestitures(2013) Vidal, ElenaThis dissertation examines what drives firms' divestiture activity and how it impacts their performance. Divestitures is defined here as the sale, spin-off or liquidation of assets from an ongoing organization. This dissertation seeks to understand what drives firms' reconfiguration activities via divestitures, and in turn how the divestiture activity impacts the future performance in terms of survival and growth. The dissertation identifies differences in the performance of a firm relative to their prior performance as a driver for divestitures, as well as other financial constraints. Moreover, it shows that, counter-intuitively, divestitures are a tool for growth and helps strong firms continue to grow and helps them avoid becoming a target for acquisitions; whereas in the case of weak firms, divesting does not help them avoid shutting down. This dissertation argues that divestitures are tools firms use to reconfigure and reallocate their financial and managerial resources; in the case of weak firms, divestitures are a mode used primarily to free the necessary monetary funds necessary for firms to address problems and regain competitiveness, whereas for strong firms divestitures are a tool to free scarce managerial resources that can be more efficiently allocated in areas that can provide further growth. This dissertation contributes to our understanding of what drives firms divestitures and corporate strategic decisions in general, and provides evidence that even firms coming from positions of strength can eliminate parts of the organization as a way to grow.
Item Open Access Aggregate Deferred Tax Asset Valuation Allowance and GDP Growth(2022) Vaknin Froymovich, ShiranThis paper examines whether deferred tax asset valuation allowance growth, as a measure of expected future performance, aggregated at the macroeconomy level, conveys information about future GDP growth. Using hand-collected tax footnote data from publicly traded firms over the 1993 to 2019 period, I find that quarterly aggregate valuation allowance growth is negatively associated with future GDP growth up to four quarters ahead. This relationship is incremental to existing accounting and macroeconomic GDP growth indicators, especially for forecast horizons longer than one quarter when other indicators are uninformative. Additionally, the findings suggest that aggregate valuation allowance growth provides unique information that cannot be obtained from other sources of management information, such as management forecasts, the allowance for doubtful accounts, banks’ loan loss provision, and goodwill impairment loss. The findings further indicate that the documented association of GDP growth and aggregate valuation allowance growth is driven by the corporate profit growth component of GDP growth. Collectively, the evidence indicates that aggregate valuation allowance growth provides incremental forward-looking information about GDP growth.
Item Open Access Algorithms for Online Marketplaces: New Approaches to Order Fulfillment and Recommendation Systems(2024) Amil, AyoubThis dissertation explores the development and analysis of new algorithms for sequential decision-making under uncertainty, with a focus on optimizing operations and resource allocations within online marketplaces such as e-commerce and rental platforms. The research initially revisits and expands upon the multi-item order fulfillment model, introducing dynamic policies that combine randomized fulfillment strategies, prophet inequalities, and subgradient methods. Our approaches not only achieve asymptotic optimality and strong approximation guarantees in the multi-item fulfillment setting, but also provide insights on how to construct robust policies in scenarios where you have limited resources. The findings in this dissertation introduce a novel approach to the management of resources in complex environments, presenting a nearly optimal framework for developing policies tailored to the complexities of multi-item order fulfillment. Moreover, our analysis can be extended into the domain of rental operations, showcasing the flexibility and broad applicability of our proposed solutions.
In addition, the dissertation addresses the complexities of online recommendation systems through a contextual bandit framework, examining both full-feedback and bandit-feedback settings. By formulating the problem to accommodate arbitrary mappings from user contexts to product feature values, this research provides new online algorithms that effectively minimize regret. The analysis extends to general policy classes, revealing an inherent trade-off between approximation accuracy and statistical error for a given policy class.
Collectively, this work advances theoretical knowledge in sequential decision-making and algorithm design, providing actionable strategies for improving decision-making processes such as fulfillment and recommendations in online marketplaces.
Item Open Access All That Twitters Is Not Gold: How Verbally Documenting or Reflecting During or After an Experience Can Affect Enjoyment(2013) Wolfe, JaredSocial media and mobile technology now provide consumers with the opportunity to continuously document or reflect on their moment-to-moment internal and external experiences. For instance, "tweets" are often written while one is consuming some experience, just as other forms of social media may be used in their respective ways for documentation or reflection while an experience is unfolding. But what effect does verbal documentation or reflection have on consumers' enjoyment of their time? The authors propose that when consumers can verbally document or reflect about topics other than the current experience, increased mind wandering can occur, which can help lead to reduced enjoyment. Testing the theoretical model through five experiments, the authors show that verbal documentation or reflection during an experience can reduce enjoyment, regardless of whether that experience is generally enjoyable or generally unenjoyable. However, the same effect does not occur when consumers are specifically asked to verbally document or reflect only about the experience they are taking part in. Verbal documentation or reflection right after an experience ends, which does not increase mind wandering during the experience, can lead to increased enjoyment when consumers are specifically asked to verbally document or reflect only about the experience they just took part in. Implications for the use of social media for verbal documentation and reflection by consumers and marketing managers are discussed.
Item Open Access An Empirical Examination of the Commitment to Increased Disclosure(2008-06-04) Evans, MarkI examine the relation between a corporate commitment to increased disclosure and measures of liquidity, information asymmetry, and cost of equity capital. Relative to prior research on voluntary disclosure, I use a composite, ex ante measure of commitment based in social psychology and measure commitment using characteristics of earnings announcement disclosures. Prior to Regulation Fair Disclosure (Reg FD) I find that commitment to increased disclosure is negatively related to bid-ask spreads, probability of informed trade (PIN) scores, and implied cost of capital estimates. Further analysis reveals that the disclosure of balance sheet information in earnings releases is significantly related to spreads and PINs, regardless of firms' conference call behavior, while the combination of consistent open calls and disclosure of balance sheet information in earnings releases yields the most significant results for cost of capital. After the effective date of Reg FD I find that commitment is negatively related to PIN scores and implied cost of capital estimates, but not related to bid-ask spreads. Further analysis reveals that the disclosure of balance sheet information in earnings releases is significantly related to PINs and cost of capital, regardless of firms' conference call behavior.
Item Open Access An Integrative Solution to the Conflict over Conflict(2009) Mannes, Albert EdwardThe value of task-related conflict to team effectiveness continues to generate controversy in organizational studies. I argue that this debate reflects as much differences in the conceptualization of conflict by scholars from separate traditions as it does variation in empirical settings and methods. The model proposed in this research is a more general framework for the study of team conflict that clarifies, accommodates, and reconciles to a large degree the divergent findings of prior research. It suggests that recent pessimism about the value of team conflict is overstated, and it offers a number of promising paths through which task-related conflict may improve team performance and satisfaction. Chapter 1 reviews the history of this debate and introduces the model of team conflict. Chapter 2 documents a test of the model's propositions in a correlational study of 223 MBA teams conducting a decision-making exercise. Chapter 3 features an experimental test of the model with a forecasting task completed by 60 3-person groups. And Chapter 4 revisits the conflict over conflict in light of the studies presented herein.
Item Open Access Analysis and Comparison of Queues with Different Levels of Delay Information.(2007) Guo, PengfeiInformation about delays can enhance service quality in many industries. Delay information can take many forms, with different degrees of precision. Different levels of information have different effects on customers and so on the overall system. The goal of this research is to explore these effects. We first consider a queue with balking under three levels of delay information: No information, partial information (the system occupancy) and full information (the exact waiting time). We assume Poisson arrivals, independent, exponential service times, and a single server. Customers decide whether to stay or balk based on their expected waiting costs, conditional on the information provided. By comparing the three systems, we identify some important cases where more accurate delay information improves performance. In other cases, however, information can actually hurt the provider or the customers. We then investigate the impacts on the system of different cost functions and weight distributions. Specifically, we compare systems where these parameters are related by various stochastic orders, under different information scenarios. We also explore the relationship between customer characteristics and the value of information. The results here are mostly negative. We find that the value of information need not be greater for less patient or more risk-averse customers. After that, we extend our analysis to systems with phase-type service times. Our analytical and numerical results indicate that the previous conclusions about systems with exponential service times still hold for phase-type service times. We also show that service-time variability degrades the system’s performance. At last, we consider two richer models of information: In the first model, an arriving customer learns an interval in which the system occupancy falls. In the second model, each customer’s service time is the sum of a geometric number of i.i.d. exponential phases, and an arriving customer learns the total number of phases remaining in the system. For each information model, we compare two systems, identical except that one has more precise information. We study the effects of information on performance as seen by the service provider and the customers.Item Open Access Analytical Models for Strategic Decisions in Settings with Asymmetric Information(2019) Mai, YunkeThis dissertation studies managerial problems involving strategic considerations under asymmetric information. Specifically, we build analytical models to investigate three problems.
The first problem relates to how riders' and drivers' behavior evolves in response to a ride-hailing platform's operational decisions, and study how it impacts the platform's performance and the social welfare. We build an evolutionary game theory model to establish two sustainable asymptotically stable equilibria of the dynamic system of the platform, one resembling a traditional taxi service while the other resembling a successful ride-hailing platform. Using this characterization, we then show how the platform could leverage operational tools at its disposal to optimize its performance. Finally, we establish that a platform can generally improve social welfare and may achieve the socially optimal state by prioritizing high-rating riders in matching under supply shortage. Our analysis highlights the importance for ride-hailing platforms to implement and strategically leverage rider ratings, and can potentially provide guidelines for improving platform performance not just with standard instruments such as price and wage adjustments, but also by making rider rating-driven adjustments into the matching procedure.
The second problem relates to managing innovation spillover risk in sourcing. In particular, when an innovator sources for an innovative product from a supplier who is also a competitor in the end market, the potential innovation spillover may be a serious concern. Will an innovation ever source from a competitor-supplier in the presence of innovation spillover? We attempt to answer this question with an emphasis on the ex-ante uncertain values of innovations, and distinguish between technical innovations which can only spill over through sourcing and non-technical innovations which can spill over through sourcing as well as in the market. We find that for both types, an innovator may strategically source from a competitor-supplier, albeit for polar-opposite motivations: for technical innovations it does so such that the latter would postpone launching the innovative product; and for non-technical innovations it does so such that the latter would immediately launch the innovative product alongside the innovator. These insights highlight the richness of and may inform sourcing decisions in the presence of innovation spillover.
The third problem relates to information acquisition and technology adoption decisions in a partnership. Using classical information acquisition and technology adoption results for a single decision-maker as a benchmark, we establish that it could be optimal for the partnership to prematurely adopt/reject the technology. Furthermore, anticipating premature decisions in a later period could trigger unraveling which leads to a series of premature decisions in earlier periods. Finally, for a given precision of the partnership's belief of the success probability of the technology, the structure of the optimal policy may be non-monotonic in the belief, due to the non-convexity and discontinuity of the associated coupled optimization problem. Thus, the presence of a partner may have a non-trivial and profound impact on the prescribed optimal information acquisition and technology adoption decisions.
Item Open Access Antecedents and Consequences of Authenticity in the Marketplace(2019) Du, Katherine MargaretConsumers value and seek authenticity in the marketplace, including in their products, themselves, and others. Due to its appeal to consumers, the study of authenticity in the marketplace has recently accelerated in consumer research. Adding to this research, in this work I explore antecedents and consequences of perceived authenticity related to both consumers and market offerings.
Essay 1 (“Goldilocks Signaling: How the Number of Signaling Items in an Ensemble Affects Perceptions of Consumer Authenticity”) explores how multi-product signals—consumption ensembles—are perceived by observers. Specifically, this research explores how the number of identity-signaling items (e.g., Nike items) a consumer includes in their ensemble affects observer perceptions of the consumer’s identity-specific authenticity (e.g., authenticity as an athlete). If consumers wish to be seen as authentic, essay 1 demonstrates that they have to balance self-presentation with the perception that they are trying too hard to signal. Accordingly, I find that consumers with ensembles featuring a moderate or “just right” number of signaling items are generally (with some boundaries) perceived as most authentic in relation to the identity they are signaling—a “Goldilocks signaling” effect. I demonstrate that consumers make these inferences both spontaneously, without direct prompting regarding authenticity from experimenters, and reflecting the choice patterns of more versus less authentic consumers. Furthermore, such perceptions are important to consumers’ social relationships; I demonstrate that perceived authenticity can affect how much observers like the identity-signaling consumer and how confident they are in the consumer’s identity-relevant skill. This research is one of very few experimental papers in consumer behavior to consider ensemble signaling and provides new insights into the psychological processes underlying judgments of consumers’ authenticity.
Essay 2 (“True to the Original or to the Creator? How Consumers Navigate the Tension Between Iconic and Expressive Authenticity in Evaluations of Creative Adaptations”) explores the role of authenticity in consumers’ evaluations of creative adaptations by leveraging the context of cover songs. I demonstrate that consumers’ evaluations of cover songs are driven by the relative value they place on the cover’s iconic—truth to the original—and expressive—truth to the cover artist—authenticity. Greater difference from the original causes consumers to perceive the cover song as more expressively authentic but less iconically authentic. Consumers often value both these types of authenticity, hence causing them to prefer cover songs that are moderately versus more or less different from their original. Consumers who are highly attached to the original, however, place increased value on iconic authenticity and hence prefer cover songs that are less different from their beloved original. In addition to showing support for this theory, I cast doubt on other, more general theories that could drive this effect. My findings provide a first detailed view of how multiple different types of authenticity affect consumer evaluations.
Together, these essays advance understanding of antecedents and consequences of multiple types of authenticity for both consumers (essay 1) and consumption objects (essay 2) in the marketplace.
Item Open Access Application of Game Theory Analysis in Epidemiology and Service Management(2010) Yang, LiuWe present two game theoretic models on resource allocation in epidemic control and waiting time competition in service management.
The first model considers the drug allocation problem when facing the outbreak of an international influenza pandemic. The drugs are for prophylactic use. Since drug stockpiles are presently scattered in different countries, the outbreak of an epidemic gives rise to a game in which each country must make decisions about how best to allocate its own stockpile in order to protect its population. We develop a two-period multivariate Reed-Frost model to represent the spread of the epidemic within and across countries at its onset. We show that for small probability of between-country infections, the underlying game is supermodular and that a unique Pareto optimal Nash equilibrium exists. Further, we identify sufficient conditions under which the optimal solution of a central planner constitutes a Pareto improvement over the decentralized equilibrium.
The second model investigates the impact of reference effect on firms' waiting
time competition. We consider two firms (modeled as M/M/1 queueing facilities)
announcing the expected waiting times to attract customers. Customers' joining
decisions depend not only on the announced waiting times, but also on the reference effect, as demonstrated by the psychology literature. Reference effect, modeled in the spirit of prospect theory, is a "kinked" function of the gap between customers' expectation and perception of the waiting time, where the expectation is formed by both firms'announcements. We prove the existence of a unique (Pareto optimal) Nash equilibrium in the presence of reference effect. We show that comparing to the no reference effect case, the equilibrium waiting times are shorter and firms tend to announce a same waiting time.
Item Open Access Asymptotic Analysis and Performance-based Design of Large Scale Service and Inventory Systems(2010) Talay Degirmenci, IsilayMany types of services are provided using some equipment or machines, e.g. transportation systems using vehicles. Designs of these systems require capacity decisions, e.g., the number of vehicles. In my dissertation, I use many-server and conventional heavy-traffic limit theory to derive asymptotically optimal capacity decisions, giving the desired level of delay and availability performance with minimum investment. The results provide near-optimal solutions and insights to otherwise analytically intractable problems.
The dissertation will comprise two essays. In the first essay, &ldquoAsymptotic Analysis of Delay-based Performance Metrics and Optimal Capacity Decisions for the Machine Repair Problem with Spares,&rdquo I study the M/M/R machine repair problem with spares. This system can be represented by a closed queuing network. Applications include fleet vehicles' repair and backup capacity, warranty services' staffing and spare items investment decisions. For these types of systems, customer satisfaction is essential; thus, the delays until replacements of broken units are even more important than delays until the repair initiations of the units. Moreover, the service contract may include conditions on not only the fill rate but also the probability of acceptable delay (delay being less than a specified threshold value).
I address these concerns by expressing delays in terms of the broken-machines process; scaling this process by the number of required operating machines (or the number of customers in the system); and using many-server limit theorems (limits taken as the number of customers goes to infinity) to obtain the limiting expected delay and probability of acceptable delay for both delay until replacement and repair initiation. These results lead to an approximate optimization problem to decide on the repair and backup-capacity investment giving the minimum expected cost rate, subject to a constraint on the acceptable delay probability. Using the characteristics of the scaled broken-machines process, we obtain insights about the relationship between quality of service and capacity decisions. Inspired by the call-center literature, we categorize capacity level choice as efficiency-driven, quality-driven, or quality- and efficiency-driven. Hence, our study extends the conventional call center staffing problem to joint staffing and backup provisioning. Moreover, to our knowledge, the machine-repair problem literature has focused mainly on mean and fill rate measures of performance for steady-state cost analysis. This approach provides complex, nonlinear expressions not possible to solve analytically. The contribution of this essay to the machine-repair literature is the construction of delay-distribution approximations and a near-optimal analytical solution. Among the interesting results, we find that for capacity levels leading to very high utilization of both spares and repair capacity, the limiting distribution of delay until replacement depends on one type of resource only, the repair capacity investment.
In the second essay, &ldquoDiffusion Approximations and Near-Optimal Design of a Make-to-Stock Queue with Perishable Goods and Impatient Customers,&rdquo I study a make-to-stock system with perishable inventory and impatient customers as a two-sided queue with abandonment from both sides. This model describes many consumer goods, where not only spoilage but also theft and damage can occur. We will refer to positive jobs as individual products on the shelf and negative jobs as backlogged customers. In this sense, an arriving negative job provides the service to a waiting positive job, and vice versa. Jobs that must wait in queue before potential matching are subject to abandonment. Under certain assumptions on the magnitude of the abandonment rates and the scaled difference between the two arrival rates (products and customers), we suggest approximations to the system dynamics such as average inventory, backorders, and fill rate via conventional heavy traffic limit theory.
We find that the approximate limiting queue length distribution is a normalized weighted average of two truncated normal distributions and then extend our results to analyze make-to-stock queues with/without perishability and limiting inventory space by inducing thresholds on the production (positive) side of the queue. Finally, we develop conjectures for the queue-length distribution for a non-Markovian system with general arrival streams. We take production rate as the decision variable and suggest near-optimal solutions.
Item Open Access Behavioral Perspectives on Organizational Change: Practice Adoption, Product Culling, and Technological Search(2016) Wilson, Alex JamesThis dissertation explores the complex process of organizational change, applying a behavioral lens to understand change in processes, products, and search behaviors. Chapter 1 examines new practice adoption, exploring factors that predict the extent to which routines are adopted “as designed” within the organization. Using medical record data obtained from the hospital’s Electronic Health Record (EHR) system I develop a novel measure of the “gap” between routine “as designed” and routine “as realized.” I link this to a survey administered to the hospital’s professional staff following the adoption of a new EHR system and find that beliefs about the expected impact of the change shape fidelity of the adopted practice to its design. This relationship is more pronounced in care units with experienced professionals and less pronounced when the care unit includes departmental leadership. This research offers new insights into the determinants of routine change in organizations, in particular suggesting the beliefs held by rank-and-file members of an organization are critical in new routine adoption. Chapter 2 explores changes to products, specifically examining culling behaviors in the mobile device industry. Using a panel of quarterly mobile device sales in Germany from 2004-2009, this chapter suggests that the organization’s response to performance feedback is conditional upon the degree to which decisions are centralized. While much of the research on product exit has pointed to economic drivers or prior experience, these central finding of this chapter—that performance below aspirations decreases the rate of phase-out—suggests that firms seek local solutions when doing poorly, which is consistent with behavioral explanations of organizational action. Chapter 3 uses a novel text analysis approach to examine how the allocation of attention within organizational subunits shapes adaptation in the form of search behaviors in Motorola from 1974-1997. It develops a theory that links organizational attention to search, and the results suggest a trade-off between both attentional specialization and coupling on search scope and depth. Specifically, specialized unit attention to a more narrow set of problems increases search scope but reduces search depth; increased attentional coupling also increases search scope at the cost of depth. This novel approach and these findings help clarify extant research on the behavioral outcomes of attention allocation, which have offered mixed results.
Item Open Access Biases in Creativity Assessment: How the Social Setting Influences Observer's Perceptions of Team and Individual Creativity(2013) Kay, MinOne important aspect of enhancing creativity in organizations is to measure and reward creativity. However, not every creative process can be immediately tied to and measured by numerical standards. In such cases, the manager's subjective impression of employee creativity may replace objective measures as the basis for decision-making. In an organizational context, the social context in which the work occurs must be thoroughly considered as employees often work in groups on major products. As such, this paper examines two questions on how the social setting affects the observer's creativity assessment. Firstly, I demonstrate that observers use surface features of groups to infer the creativity of group output: they expect demographically diverse groups to be more creative than homogeneous groups and this difference in expectation biases the evaluation. Secondly, when observers form impressions of individual creativity based on group output, I demonstrate that they commit the fundamental attribution error in partitioning credit between others in the group and the target individual. In turn this either benefits or costs the perceived creativity of the target, depending on the objective quality of group output. Taken together, the two questions addressed in this paper emphasize the need for further research on factors that influence the observer's perception of creativity in an organizational context.